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THE ANTI-SLAVERY PAPERS OF 
JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL 



IN TWO VOLUMES 



THE ANTI-SLAVERY 



PAPERS OF 



JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL 




BOSTON AND NEW YORK 

HOUGHTON MIFFLIN AND COMPANY 

MDCCCCII 



.Li I 



THF K I8PARY OF 
CONGRESS, 

i 
CL*SS^V_'XXr No. 

cory b. 



Copyright 1902 by Houghton Mifflin Sf Company 
All rights reserved 



INTRODUCTION 

Une of the most interesting chapters of Mr. Scud- 
der's admirable 'Life ' of Lowell is that which 
recounts Lowell's part in the Abolition movement. 
Tlie part was not a conspicuous one, and might 
easily be lost sight of in a career crowded as 
Lowell's was with distinguished activities. All the 
more easily might his prose contributions to the 
columns of the Anti-slavery press be overlooked. 
He himself did not value them highly, counting his 
poems his chief service to the causey and the papers 
have remained uncollected until now brought to- 
gether in these two volumes. I Yet during the seven 
years of Lowell's association with the Abolition 
movement, it had no more brilliant advocacy than 
he gave it in the contributions which appeared 
usually unsigned save for the initials J. R. L. 
Tliey were brief, often fragmentary, frequently 
taking their text from themes of passing interest, 
and can hardly heighten Lowell's literary reputa- 
tion. \ Yet it is not inconceivable that their author 
might look with pleasure upon the distinction that 



C vi 3 

is now given them : for they preserve the record of 
his part, they glow with his enthusiasm, and burn 
with his anger, in a great moral and patriotic 
struggle. 

The extent of these papers is prime evidence of 
Lowell's activity in the cause. The two volumes 
contain more than fifty articles ; the first five con- 
tributed during 1844 t° the " Pennsylvania Free- 
man;" the rest, between 1845 and 1850, to the 
"National Anti-Slavery Standard," of which he 
was for two of these years titular associate editor. 
Through all the earlier papers runs the fiery zeal 
which we are accustomed to attribute to the young 
convert. The implication would seem to be a just 
one ; for the first of the articles was written soon 
after LowelVs marriage to Maria White, to whom, 
in Mr. Norton's words, he " owed all that a man 
may owe to the woman he loves." There were, to be 
sure, other influences that tended to enlist him in the 
Abolition cause. Chief of these were the leadings 
of heredity : the James Lowell who sixty years ear- 
lier had brought forward the Anti-slavery clause 
in the Massachusetts Bill of Rights was LowelVs 
grandfather ; and in his father's dining-room at 
Elmwood there hung, we are told, a portrait of 
Wilberforce, the English liberator. But we have 
his own evidence in a letter written many years later, 



[ vii 3 

that his Abolitionism began in 18JjD, which was 
the year of his engagement to Miss White. It re- 
quires no stretch of the imagination, then, to see in 
his love the insjnration of LowelVs service to the 
cause, and find it fired with a chivalrous quality. 
Yet his enthusiasm did not make him a thorough- 
going reformer. That zoould have meant a change 
of nature. Compact as he was of poet and of 
critic, he never had that intense and unwearying 
devotion which keeps a man like Garrison at his 

. i 

task through thick and thin. His temperament 
was more mercurial. He icas, in fact, surprisingly 
free from radicalism, and never' sympathized with 
the extreme wing of the Abolitionists in their at- 
tacks on the Constitution and their proposals to 
dissolve the Union. The very first contribution he 
made to the "Freeman" shows the temper in 
which he espoused the Anti-slavery move?nent and 
which he maintained throughout. 1" The aim of the \ 
true Abolitionist," he wrote there, " is not only [ $ 
to put an end to Negro slavery in America : he is 
equally the sworn foe of tyranny throughout the 
world."l This temper was by no means incompat- 
ible with a power of deep indignation, as the most 
cursory reading of the papers will show. Lowell 
seldom exhibited his powers of invective and sar- 
casm more effectually than here. He was not 



I viii 1 

mealy-mouthed; nor icas he untenacious of his 
convictions. There is plenty of plain speaking here 
and no little downright dogmatism, but one finds 
in these articles little argument, little setting of rea- 
son against reason : for that Lowell had not the 
patience. He confessed to " a certain impatience of 
mind " which made him " contemptuously indiffer- 
ent about arguing matters that had once become 
convictions" He appealed, therefore, directly to 
the moral principle, and having invoked its author- 
ity asked no other, but forthwith laid about him 
with might and main. In these papers he is gener- 
ally seen in attack, flashing from point to point 
wherever a telling blow may be brought home. 

In such a struggle all the resources of his ready 
wit and all the spoils of his wide reading came 
into effective service. The papers show a surpris- 
ing range of topics : the Irish Rebellion and the 
French Revolution, the Church Fathers and Amer- 
ican politicians, equally serve his turn for text and 
illustration. TJie papers reveal also a like range 
and variety of moods, from banter and light ridi- 
cule to sarcasm and scornful denunciation, and 
through them all one may see the play of the two 
characters that met in Lowell's nature, the humor- 
ist and the moralist. Whenever he touches upon 
themes related to religion, the church or the clergy, 



the moralist in him mounts the pulpit stairs, but 
more frequently the voice is the voice of the hu- 
morist. 

The wit of the papers is perhaps their most 
marked and pervading literary quality. It lightens 
the descriptions of politicians and parties, animates 
the portraits of great figures like Webster, relieves 
the more strenuous passages of denunciation, and 
enlivens the occasional bits of argument. But the 
true vitality of these early comp)ositions is the 'pa- 
triotism which glows through them with unfailing 
steadiness. Lowell's patriotism was the enduring 
passion of his life, and it is expressed here with a 
freshness and ardor that foretell its full flowering 
in the a Biglow Papers " and the " Commemoration 
Oder 

Most of the papers included in these two vol- 
umes are reprinted from the original manuscripts, 
now in the hands of Mrs. Sydney Howard Gay, 
whose courtesy the publishers gratefully acknow- 
ledge. 



CONTENTS 

A WORD IN SEASON Page 3 

January 16, 1845 

TEXAS 8 

January 30, 1845 

\ j THE PREJUDICE OF COLOR 16 

February 13, 1845 

THE CHURCH AND CLERGY 23 

February 27, 1845 

THE CHURCH AND CLERGY AGAIN v 29 

March 27, 1845 

DANIEL WEBSTER 35 

July 2, 1846 

THE FRENCH REVOLUTION OF 1848 44 

April 13, 1848 

SHALL WE EVER BE REPUBLICAN ?* 52 

April 20, 1848 

PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATES 60 

May 11, 1848 

AN IMAGINARY CONVERSATION 68 

May 25, 1848 



[ xii ] 

THE SACRED PARASOL 

June 8, 1848 

THE NOMINATIONS FOR THE PRESIDENCY 

June 22, 1848 

^ SYMPATHY WITH IRELAND - 

June 29, 1848 

WHAT WILL MR. WEBSTER DO ? 
July 13, 1848 

THE NEWS FROM PARIS v 

July 20, 1848 

THE BUFFALO CONVENTION 

August 10, 1848 

THE IRISH REBELLION 

August 24, 1848 

FANATICISM IN THE NAVY » 

August 31, 1848 



TURNCOATS 



September 14, 1848 



85 



93 



100 



108 



116 



123 



128 



135 



EXCITING INTELLIGENCE FROM SOUTH CAROLINA 143 

September 7, 1848 



151 



158 



THE ATTITUDE OF THE RELIGIOUS PRESS 
October 5, 1848 

b " THE CONQUERORS OF THE NEW WORLD AND THEHi 

BONDSMEN" 166 



October 12, 1848 



C xiii 3 

"THE CONQUERORS OF THE NEW WORLD AND THEIR 

BONDSMEN." Second Notice 176 

October 26, 1848 

CALLING THINGS BY THEHt RIGHT NAMES 184 

November 9, 1848 

^ PRO-SLAVERY LOGIC 194 

November 23, 1848 

^ IRISH AND AMERICAN PATRIOTS 202 

November 30, 1848 

THE PRESIDENT'S MESSAGE \ 209 

December 14, 1848 

A WASHINGTON MONUMENT 216 

December 28, 1848 



The first five papers were printed in " The Pennsylvania Freeman ; " all 
the others in "The National Anti-Slavery Standard." The dates given 
above are those of publication. 



ANTI-SLAVERY PAPERS 



A WORD IN SEASON 



A 



good test for deciding the soundness of any 
moral stand -which a man has taken is the amount 
of opposition it excites. Pure truth is poison to 
the mere natural man, as he is strangely called, — 
that is, to man in the w?matural state to which ages 
of subservience to policy and compromise with 
wrong have reduced him. With this superinduced 
and adulterated nature, truth has no sympathy, and 
cannot assimilate. Hence the virulence with which 
early reformers are always assailed. Society as then 
constituted sees that either it or they must perish. 
If the reformers are madmen or fanatics, Society will 
be the last to call them by either of these names. 
They are its choicest weapons against sane reform- 
ers, and their edge would be blunted by using them 
too indiscriminately. A madman will prove himself 
to be such without any extraneous help ; but when 
the reformer has taken his position in the com- 
manding citadel of some indestructible truth, then 
the old battering-rams must be brought out again, 
the old swords sharpened and furbished up, and the 



C 4 ] 
startled spirit of this world can find room in its 
dainty mouth for obloquy and denunciation. The 
time has at length come when the charge of fanati- 
cism may be brought to bear with effect. 

Respectability has a thousand masks, but that of 
Conservatism is the fairest of them all. Respecta- 
bility is that which has in itself no essential claim 
to respect, but depends entirely on external and 
assumed ones. It is this that clings blindly to 
things as they are, which dreads change, which 
trembles when a penetrating eye is turned upon 
it, and it is with this that reform has always its 
toughest struggle. Evil, unaided by respectability, 
would shrink back to its original darkness before 
the first glance of the terrible eyes of the right. 
But the great inert mass of respectability lies all 
around it, like a rampart of insensate cotton bales, 
calling itself Conservatism. It is this respectability 
in the community which has been shrieking, Fanati- 
cism ! at each onward step of abolition reform ; and 
the new position assumed by the American Society 
seems to have tormented it more than any others. 
The devil feels the approach of a higher and purer 
power, and tears his victim the more agonizingly. 

I rejoice at the stand which has been taken by 
the Society. In my eyes it never looked so sub- 
limely as now. It has refused to palter with wrong. 



C 5 ] 
It has refused to fling away its impenetrable moral 
buckler, and to fight the enemy with their own 
clumsy weapons of politics and guile, in which it 
has no skill, and with which it would surely be 
defeated. I am glad that the tree has had such a 
hearty shaking that all the fruit in which the old 
worms of worldliness and respectability have laid 
their eggs, must needs fall. 

Abolitionism has its respectable side also, in virtue 
of being the advocate of Freedom. The poet who 
can round off a couplet, and the editor who can 
give sound to the closing of a paragraph by some 
flourish about freedom and the destiny of America, 
claims to be an abolitionist. But let abolitionism 
become anything else than speculative, — let it 
take one step towards the accomplishment of its ob- 
ject, — and they repudiate immediately with indig- 
nation all sympathy with fanaticism, yet remain as 
good abolitionists as before. 

Almost every man has his bosom respectability, 
which has been detected by and has writhed under 
the Ithuriel-spear of pure abolitionism. The respec- 
tability which first took the alarm was that of the 
church and clergy; the next was that of politics. 
Respectability is a thing which cares not to stand 
well with itself; its meat and drink are to stand 
well with its neighbors. The influence which a man 



t 6 1 

gains and exercises by his religious profession or his 
vote is of that palpable kind which is much easier 
for the ordinary intellect to grasp than that slow- 
growing but at last irresistible power which results 
from a steady, conscientious adherence to principle, 
no matter how sublimated that principle may appear 
in the eyes of the many. To men whose whole 
harvest of respect and observance had consisted of 
a few starved and mildewed ears gleaned from 
among the thick tares of sectarianism or politics, it 
seemed little less than an ostracism from all the 
good and power of this world to withdraw into the 
quiet privacy of purely moral exertion. But Truth 
will only be the sure friend and helper of him who 
trusts wholly and unreservedly to her. If a man 
lean upon the church or the state, these crutches 
will sooner or later break under him. If we make 
anti-slavery political, its victory will be delayed, and 
when it comes will produce results as unstable as 
those of a political victory. ^ The aim of the true 
abolitionist is not only to put an end to negro 
slavery in America ; he is equally the sworn foe of 
tyranny throughout the world. But if American 
slavery be politically abolished, the power of the 
abolitionist will extend no farther. No tall moral 
beacon-fire will be kindled, flinging its light into 
the unwilling recesses and hideous caverns of other 



C i ] 

oppressions, and making the tyrant shrink and 
tremble. Evil and wrong can "wield the cunning 
weapons of political management more adroitly than 
we ; but their swords and spears lose temper, and 
their sinewy arms are palsied by a touch of the 
olive branch of moral effort. How idle is any at- 
tempt to use both, to defeat our enemies with carnal 
weapons, and then strive to maintain and improve 
our victory with spiritual ones ! As well might the 
husbandman plough his field with the mad, plunging 
colter of the cannon ball, and hope to raise a har- 
vest of corn in the furrows by planting gunpowder. 
All our enemies ask of us is that we should come 
down from our stronghold, and fight them among 
their traps and pitfalls, where they are secure, if not 
of victory, yet of escaping entire defeat. Every 
time that we accept this challenge, and suffer the 
necessary check which follows, we weaken our cause, 
and prepare ourselves for more and worse defeats. 
We lose the prestige with which a series of uninter- 
rupted victories had made us so terrible that the 
mere unfurling of our white banner was the sig- 
nal for the enemy's flight ; we alienate from us the 
great sympathies of nature and the soul, hitherto 
our fastest allies ; we can no longer claim that our 

" Friends are exultations, agonies, 
And love and man's unconquerable mind." 



TEXAS 

JL he joint resolution for the annexation of Texas, 
offered by Mr. Milton Brown of Tennessee, passed 
the House of Representatives at Washington on Sat- 
urday, by a majority of twenty-two. Whatever of 
evil shall result from it must be laid cheerfully at 
the door of the Democratic party ; whatever of good 
must be ascribed to that kind forethought of Provi- 
dence which makes evil the protecting husk always 
to the seed of good. 

We say that the blame is to be chiefly ascribed to 
the Democratic party. They have been the active 
agents in consummating the crime. Even in Massa- 
chusetts, where the mass of the people, including a 
large portion of their own party, were opposed to 
annexation, they yet (with a bold wickedness more 
creditable to their honesty than the shuffling policy 
of the Whigs) made it a main issue in the contest. 
To Mr. Bancroft belongs the credit of that new 
and startling discovery in political economy, that to 
create a market for any kind of produce is the short- 
est way to destroy the cultivation and export of it. 



C 9 ] 
Annex Texas, said the profound historian, and you 
strike a blow at the root of slavery. The invention 
of this principle has been generally ascribed to the 
philosophic mind of Mr. A. H. Everett, but, though 
well worthy of his piercing insight and comprehen- 
sive views, he must be content to surrender it to the 
nimbler mind of our American Livy ; and he will do 
this the more readily, since he can claim the undis- 
puted and unenvied patent right to the even more 
remarkable discovery that the South has always been 
on the side of freedom, and the North opposed to 
it, since the adoption of the Federal Constitution. 
But the apathy of the Whigs had almost as much in- 
fluence in the passing of the Texas bill as the active 
villany of the Democrats. It is no fault of either party 
if slavery be not forever henceforth the ruling spirit 
of our national policy. If the Whig party had gone 
into the contest as sincerely opposed to the annex- 
ation of Texas as the mass of the Democrats were 
in favor of it, we have no doubt the result of the 
presidential election would have been reversed. But 
a large majority of the Whig party are not, and can- 
not well ever be, very ardent haters of the slave 
system. Embracing, as it does, the large capitalists 
and monopolists of the North, who feel a natural 
sympathy with the monopolists of the South, it is 
not to be expected that the Whig party can take a 



C 10 3 

very decided or honest anti-slavery stand. It is not 
money or railroads or factories that the Northern 
monopolist usurps; he lays his selfish hands upon 
human freedom like his brother at the South, and 
hence a feeling of unavoidable sympathy between 
them. The system of labor and of its reward at 
the North we sincerely believe to be but little better 
than that at the South. If the Whig party had pos- 
sessed even a spark of anti-slavery feeling in regard 
to Texas, the election of a pro-slavery president, in- 
stead of extinguishing it, would have fanned it into 
a flame, and it is as certain to our mind as that the 
sun shines, that Texas could never be annexed in the 
face of a decided and stern conscientious opposition 
on the part of even a minority of the people. A very 
little conscience will overmaster a great deal of policy. 
The result conveys a strong lesson of the futility 
of political action. The opponents of annexation, 
defeated with the poor weapons of their choice, seem 
at the same time to have had their moral strength 
palsied. As soon as the presidential election was 
decided against Mr. Clay, every professedly anti- 
Texas Whig exclaimed despondingly, " There is 
no hope now of keeping out Texas ! " As if any- 
thing but a pure moral sense in the people would 
ever have kept it out. The government at Wash- 
ington, from the President downward, is only a gauge 



of the popular virtue, and rises or is depressed ac- 
cordingly. The vote upon this question presents the 
singular anomaly of a party totally defeated with 
Justice, Freedom, Civilization, and Humanity (as it 
seemed) for their allies! And why? They have 
endeavored to do battle against evil, with the weap- 
ons of evil. Though again and again convinced 
that their God had one foot of crumbling clay, they 
still worshipped it even more fervently than ever, and 
bowing themselves, shouted louder hosannas to their 
poor idol of man's devising, Expediency. As the 
Greeks and Romans are said to have built altars to 
the One God, and to have mingled his worship with 
that of their own barbarous divinities, so did the 
Whig party mix empty and formal praises of right 
and humanity, with their practical worship of a des- 
picable expediency. Could the awful powers which 
they invoked be pleased with such invocation? 
Could they otherwise than stand aloof with averted 
eyes? He doubts the omnipotence of Truth who 
would serve her by the aid of expediency, and be- 
comes unworthy of her service. A wrong done to 
the pure spirit of Truth must be avenged, though 
the wrong-doer may have served her long and well, 
and may only have erred through a desire to serve 
her. But the great conscience of the universe is 
immitigable ; its golden scales must come back to 



I 12 ] 

their perfect balance. The avenger is patient ; alike 
to it is a day or a century ; yet surely the reckoning 
shall come. 

And how has it been in this matter of Texas ? 
Thousands of the Whig party were no doubt strongly 
hostile to annexation, we had almost said uncom- 
promisingly hostile to it. But no ; the smooth devil 
of expediency persuaded them into a compromise 
with the very sin for which they professed the most 
thorough hatred. What moral invincibility could 
that party hope for, who gave their vote to a slave- 
holder for the sake of crushing slavery ? What moral 
power they hoped for we know not; what they 
had the result of the Texas business has shown too 
clearly. The fact is, that the people of this country 
have been so long taught to consider the law of man 
as paramount to the laws of God that slavery has 
had at least the merit of speaking out boldly and 
frankly, while Freedom has hardly dared to whisper 
above her breath. Wrong has had the shield of 
authority, and so wholly idolatrous have we become, 
that even in our churches, the Constitution has taken 
the place of the Decalogue. Even in debating the 
subject of annexation, the question of slavery has 
been a quite subordinate one, and the chief struggle 
has hinged on the desire for political ascendancy, 
entertained respectively by the North and the South. 



c 13 n 

How could the anti-Texas party hope to occupy an 
impregnable moral position against slavery, after 
voting for a slaveholder ? The anti-slavery feeling of 
both parties was an article chiefly manufactured to 
meet the Northern abolition demand, — not to meet 
the moral, but political demand, — and it was not 
intended to outlast the election. We firmly believe 
that if the Northern Whigs in Congress had opposed 
annexation on rigid anti-slavery grounds; if they 
could have forgotten for a moment their reverence 
for a pro-slavery constitution, a sufficient number of 
Northern Democrats would have been awed into 
opposition to defeat the measure. But Whigs and 
Democrats must exhaust all their strength in arguing 
the constitutional question ; and thus it always will 
be, till the utter worthlessness of that piece of parch- 
ment has been so thoroughly illustrated by the re- 
jection of its authority by all good men, that poli- 
ticians instead of asking Is it constitutional ? shall 
be compelled to ask Is it right f 

After all, the saddest part of the matter is that 
the moral sense of the mass of the people should be 
so dead, their intelligence in political affairs so lim- 
ited, that they can be willing not only to submit to 
this iniquity, but to sustain it. That the mere catch- 
word of extending the area of freedom could be 
sufficient to draw them all shouting after the Jugger- 



[ 14] 
naut car of Slavery is enough to make one sick at 
heart. But, by showing us the source of the evil, 
it shows us also where and how the remedy is to be 
applied. It is an additional incitement to our cour- 
age, our zeal, and our devotion, by proving to us 
that the work we have to do is greater than we had 
expected ; that we cannot look closely at any social 
wrong without finding out its inextricable connection 
f with all others ; and that the abolition of American 
\ negro slavery is but a small part of our work as 
Jjpeformers. These rel ics of the stern winter^ of bar- 
barism only lie safely in the shadow of the selfish 
walls and fences which intersect our social condition. 
Pull these down, and give the sun of humanity free 
leave to shine, and they would melt imperceptibly 
away, fertilizing the soil they once encumbered. All 
the different efforts of reform tend in the same direc- 
tion. The temperance man and the abolitionist are 
led to the feet of the same great fact by different 
paths. 

But the advocates of slavery will find that they 
have not advanced a single step even if they succeed 
in annexing Texas. Slavery is but the weaker for 
this seeming triumph. Every success of wrong is 
a step toward its annihilation. What if five or six 
score of men come together at Washington, and say 
that the institution of domestic slavery shall be ex- 



c 15 : 

tended and perpetuated ? How stands the case then ? 
When the question is asked, Shall slavery he fos- 
tered and strengthened ? a few pitiful political hacks 
and time-servers answer Yes ! But is slavery thereby 
made the stronger ? Before making up our minds 
let us count the votes on the other side. The voice 
of God speaking through the divine instincts of 
our nature says No ! The indignant conscience of 
every good man in the country says No ! Justice 
turns away her mournful face and says No ! Reli- 
gion presses the cross closer to her heart and says No ! 
Freedom looks up with the young light of hope in 
her eyes and smiling says No ! Every feeling of 
our common humanity rouses itself in the soul and 
in the heart and says No ! We are reconciled to 
the slaveholders' majority of twenty-two. 



THE PREJUDICE OF COLOR 

JL here is nothing more sadly and pitiably ludi- 
crous in the motley face of our social system than 
the prejudice of color. As if no arrangement of 
society could be perfect in which there was not 
some arbitrary distinction of rank, we Democrats, 
after abolishing all other artificial claims of superi- 
ority, cling with the despair of persons just drown- 
ing, in the dreadful ocean of equality, to one more 
absurd and more wicked than all the rest. An 
aristocracy of intellect may claim some leniency of 
judgment from the reason, and there are certain 
physiological arguments to bolster up an aristocracy 
of birth ; I but a patent of nobility founded on no 
better distinction than an accidental difference in 
the secreting vessels of the skin would seem ridicu- 
lous even to a German count who had earned his 
title by the more valid consideration of thirty-six 
L_dollars. Or is it in some assumed superiority of 
intellect that the white man finds his claim to en- 
slave his colored brother? In that case the most 



[ 17 ] 
exclusive of this chromatic noblesse would stand 
in imminent peril of the lash of the overseer at 
the South, or of the editor (who occupies the posi- 
tion and discharges the duties of that distinguished 
member of our democratic system) at the North. 
For we assume it as a primary step in our argument 
that, when the moral vision of a man becomes per- 
verted enough to persuade him that he is superior 
to his fellow, he is in reality looking up at him 
from an immeasurable distance beneath. 

Regarding the American people as a professedly 
Christian people, their anti-Christian prejudices are 
at first sight astonishing enough. Were this the 
place, the greater part of them might be traced to 
the timidity and unfaithfulness of the Church, which 
to most men supplies the place of a conscience, and 
whose sacredness, instead of being founded immuta- 
bly upon a living inward principle, rises and falls 
with the popular lukewarmness or zeal. Claiming 
to be of divine origin and appointment, its main 
occupation would nevertheless seem to be to prove 
by its subservience to popular fallacies that it is 
merely a mechanical contrivance of man's ingenuity 
— a labor-saving national conscience. Our people 
go once or twice in a week to hear the praises of 
meekness, humanity, and forbearance, so curiously 
intertwined with theological dogmas that the latter 



L 18 1 
seem equally sacred with the former, and then go 
home to practise the very reverse of these virtues 
without the slightest perception of their inconsist- 
ency. For example, the black men, having endured 
unparalleled hardships and oppressions with resigna- 
tion and patience, are despised as wanting in spirit 
and capacity, while the red men, having returned 
blow for blow, — having displayed, perhaps, more 
hideous qualities than any other savages, — become 
the theme of novels and romances, are made the 
subject of rhymes almost as atrocious as one of 
their own war songs, and furnish even our chil- 
dren's books with pernicious examples of utterly 
barbarous and pagan virtues. This proves that we 
give only a theoretical assent to the doctrines of 
Christ, and that, like Louis the Eleventh of France, 
though we wear the badges of our religion most 
conspicuously, we contrive adroitly to hide them 
away whenever it suits our convenience to break 
any of its commandments. 

Meanwhile, as a prophecy is sometimes known to 
bring about its own fulfilment, the national preju- 
dice against the colored race is fast producing a 
plentiful crop of statistical facts on which to base 
an argument in its own favor. The colored people 
of the so-called free states are still held in slavery 
by something stronger than a constitution, more 



C 19] 
terrible than the cannon and the bayonet, — the 
force of a depraved and unchristian public opinion. 
We shut them rigidly out from every path of emu- 
lation or ambition, and then deny to them the pos-\ 
session of ordinary faculties. No talent will show I 
itself till there is a demand for its exercise, and 
then it leaps spontaneously and irresistibly into vig- 
orous action. The proportion of degraded whites 
in this country is to the full as great as that of the 
colored popidation ; ! it is infinitely greater if we 
consider the respective opportunities of the two 
races. 

The oppressor has always endeavored to justify 
his sin by casting reproach upon the moral or in- 
tellectual qualities of the oppressed. The Romans 
held their miserable victims in contempt, until Spar- 
tacus displayed a military genius and a heroism 
which their ablest generals were unable to make 
head against until his little army was divided against 
itself. Yet these very slaves were among the an- 
cestors of two nations now the most distinguished 
in Europe, the one for philanthropy and profound 
scholarship, the other for science. The Norman 
barons (a race of savages, strong chiefly in their 
intense and selfish acquisitiveness, to whom our 
Southern brethren are fond of comparing them- 
selves) looked upon their Saxon serfs as mere cat- 



[ 20 1 

i tie, and indeed reduced them as nearly as might be 
to that degraded level by their cruelty. Yet these 
very serfs were part and parcel of that famous 
Anglo-Saxon racej concerning whom we have seen 
so much claptrap in the newspapers for a few years 
past, especially since the project of extending the 
area of freedom has been discussed and glorified. 
A still more prominent example may be found in 
the case of the Jews, who by a series of enormous 
tyrannies were reduced to the condition of the most 
abject degradation among nations to whom they 
had given a religious system, and who borrowed 
from them their choicest examples of eloquence 
and pathos and sublime genius. Here was and is a 
people remarkable above almost all others for the 
possession of the highest and clearest intellect, and 
yet absolutely dwarfed and contracted in mind by 
being sternly debarred from any but the very lowest 
exercise of mental capacity. 1 But they had the ad- 
vantage of a less palpable outward distinguishment 
from the nations among whom they underwent their 
latest and worst captivity, and a few of them have 
been enabled to raise themselves to power and dis- 
tinction — but never as Jews. 

With us the color is made the most prominent 
feature. The newspapers can never say simply man 
or woman in speaking of the African race; they 



C « 2 

must always prefix the badge of inferiority, and 
in the same way that they say the Honorable Mem- 
ber of Congress or the Reverend Doctor of Divin- 
ity to excite our favorable sympathies, they say a 
colored man or woman to indicate that there is no 
need of our troubling our sympathies at all. Nor is 
this the worst. Though it is a part of the religious 
faith of our Northern editors, and a part (appar- 
ently) of their constitutional compact of fealty to 
the South, to consider the colored race as incapa- 
ble of high civilization, as incapable indeed, even of 
manhood, yet, so surely as a colored man commits 
any offence, a paragraph runs the rounds Of our 
newspapers, religious and all, headed " a black ruf- 
fian" as if his color were an aggravation of his 
offence, instead of being, according to their own 
standard, a palliation of it. 

\ It has always seemed to us that abolitionists 
could in no way more usefully serve their holy 
cause than by seeking to elevate the condition of 
the colored race in the free states, and to break 
down every barrier of invidious distinction between 
them and their privileged brothers. We know that 
a great deal has been done, but we think that it has 
not been made sufficiently a primary object. A few 
such men as Douglass and Remond are the strongest 
anti-slavery arguments. The very look and bearing 



C « ] 

of Douglass are eloquent, and are full of an irre- 
sistible logic against the oppression of his race. 

We have never had any doubt that the African 
race was intended to introduce a new element of 
civilization, and that the Caucasian would be bene- 
fited greatly by an infusion of its gentler and less 
selfish qualities. The Caucasian mind, which seeks 
""always to govern, at whatever cost, can never come 
to so beautiful or Christian a height of civilization, as 
with a mixture of those seemingly humbler, but truly 
more noble, qualities which teach it to obey. While 
our moral atmosphere is so dense and heavy with 
prejudice, it will be impossible for the colored man 
to stand erect or to breathe freely. Even if he 
make the attempt, he can never attain that quiet 
unconsciousness so necessary to a full and harmoni- 
ous development, while he is continually forced to 
resist the terrible pressure from without. It is for us 
to endeavor to reduce this atmosphere to the true 
natural weight, and so struggle as manfully and 
earnestly and as constantly also against the slave 
system of the North as against that of the South. 
Had we room we might easily prove by historical 
examples that no race has ever so rapidly improved 
by being brought into contact with a higher civil- 
ization (even under the most terrible disadvantages) 
as the one of which we have been speaking. 



THE CHURCH AND CLERGY 

Ajt the recent Third Party Convention held in 
this city, a resolution was adopted which declared, 
in substance, that the members of that party have 
nothing to do with the assailants of the church and 
clergy. The same convention, with true, political 
consistency, passed other resolutions expressive of 
their entire and undiminished confidence in James 
G. Birney, who, we believe, was the first who had 
the sagacity to perceive and the courage to assert 
that " the American churches were the bulwarks of 
American slavery." The Third Party have been 
acute enough to understand that the church will be 
a powerful engine wherewith to build up their po- 
litical supremacy. Pure Christianity was quite too 
clumsy and old-fashioned an affair to be of much 
service in caucuses and mass-meetings ; but here 
was a machine, with all its parts in complete repair, 
and all its joints oiled and polished, ready to their 
hand. There is no such short and easy way to 
popularity among the thoughtless and uneducated 
portion of the people as that of assuming to be the 



[ 24 3 

defender of their religious prejudices, however ab- 
surd and monstrous they may be. When a system 
has become corrupt, an indifferent skepticism gradu- 
ally pervades the more refined and intellectual classes 
of society, while the zeal of the brutal and unintelli- 
gent in its defence becomes proportioned always to 
the nearness of its approach to their sympathies and 
tastes, and the indulgence it allows to their appetites. 
It was so with the Pagan systems of Greece and 
Rome ; it was so with Judaism ; it was so with 
Catholicism ; it is so with Protestantism. It was 
the Jewish populace that cried out, " Crucify him ! " 
when Jesus stripped the sacred mask from the faces 
of the priesthood ; it was the mob of Athens that 
condemned Socrates to the hemlock ; and doubt- 
less the haranguers and demagogues who acted as 
counsel in those respectable tribunals found their 
account in endorsing the immaculate purity of their 
respective religions and the sacredness of those 
who administered them. It was the most brutal and 
degraded of the English population which assaulted 
the pure-minded Wesley, and cock-fighting, horse- 
racing, drunken priests and justices established 
their orthodoxy to the satisfaction of so competent 
a constituency by reviling or indicting him. Now 
that it has become necessary to protest against 
Protestantism, it is the ignorant and unthinking who 



C 25 ] 
are so eager to defend the right of private judg- 
ment by tarring and feathering all who differ with 
them. 

It is precisely to such a constituency as this that the 
Third Party has appealed in the resolution we have 
referred to. The mass of men love an easy religion, 
— a religion that can wink with both its eyes when 
convenient ; a religion that entitles its professors to 
a cheap and marketable kind of respectability. Puri- 
tanism has always been unpopular among them, as a 
system which demands too much and pays too little. 
In this country especially, where the clergy are en- 
tirely dependent upon the will of their hearers, the 
popular Christianity has shown a wonderful pliabil- 
ity, and has unconsciously adapted itself to the pre- 
judices and weaknesses of its supporters. We say 
unconsciously, for we believe that a majority of the 
clergy are sincere and honest, and that they only 
require to have their eyes opened to become the 
earnest advocates of that radicalism which they 
now denounce as infidelity. They have very natu- 
rally glided into the belief that religion and the 
church are synonymous terms, and that, they being 
the buckler of truth and holiness upon earth, any 
shaft aimed at them endangers the life of the great 
principles of which they fancy themselves the only 
protection and defence. In this way Christianity, 



i: ae : 

from an eternal and self-subsisting principle, has 
degenerated into a kind of private estate for a cer- 
tain body of men, rising and falling with their 
standard of excellence and purity, and instead of 
being the immitigable rebuker of every kind of sin, 
meanness, and subservience to temporal prosperity, 
has become a something which, if it do not excuse, 
at least is silent in regard to these vices of the 
people which are in accordance with the national 
standard of civilization, and which rewards with its 
powerful approval and benediction those easy and 
eternal exercises of virtue which tend to its own 
support and aggrandizement. 

Every true abolitionist is thoroughly persuaded 
that the most terrible weapon which they can bring 
to bear, not only against slavery, but against all 
other social vices, is the religious sentiment of the 
country. But it is the true religious sentiment, and 
not that of which the churches and clergy of the 
land are the present exponents, which they are 
striving to reach ; and the religious system of the 
country, as now existing, is the greatest obstacle in 
their way. Most men are desirous of some form of 
religion or other, and they prefer that which makes 
virtue most easily attainable and most profitable 
when attained. Those who think at all about the 
matter are very unwilling to be convinced that the 



C 27 ] 
institution which they and their fathers have ex- 
pended so much pains and zeal to rear has failed of 
the proposed end. They do not perceive that the 
church, which is merely the outward exponent of 
the religious sentiment, and only valuable as it 
represents that sentiment correctly, must of neces- 
sity undergo continual changes and modifications in 
order to be true to the natural advancement and 
elevation of that whereof it professes to be the em- 
blem. The political and religious principles of a 
nation must, in order to have any useful vitality, be 
in advance of that nation's civilization. When they 
have brought the civilization of that nation up to 
their own higher level, they must move forward an- 
other step. In this country the civilization of the 
people has not yet come nearly up to the political 
principles set forth in the Declaration of Independ- 
ence, but it has already gone beyond the religious 
principle as now represented by the church. It is 
time, then, for the church to re-form itself so as to 
be the emblem of something higher and purer, — 
of something which shall satisfy the demand of the 
foremost spirits of the age, — and no longer be con- 
tent, by remaining fixed in a traditionary and retro- 
spective excellence, to be the time-serving cloak 
and excuse for the indolent or interested who lag 
behind. 



C 28 D 

The surest and safest test for deciding when the 
time has arrived for the church to take another 
step forward is by observing whether it is rever- 
enced by the wisest of its members as merely an 
external symbol of some former manifestation of 
divinity, or is reverenced as containing in itself a 
present and living divineness. If only the first, 
then it is of no more sacredness than the miter or 
rochet of the bishop, and they who call it profanity 
or atheism to assail it are either unprincipled and 
base, or they are themselves the best proof of the 
necessity of the attack. That the church is at pre- 
sent in this condition we shall endeavor to prove in 
another article. 



THE CHURCH AND CLERGY 
AGAIN 

An our paper of the twenty-seventh of February, 
we said a few words about the relation which the 
body of uncompromising abolitionists have assumed 
toward the American church. The subject is so ex- 
tensive, and involves so many collateral issues, that 
we shall, in continuing the remarks which we then 
commenced, barely touch upon the more prominent 
and glaring points of the question. 

At the very outset we are met with an objection 
which seems to possess far more of force and rele- 
vancy than a rigid examination will concede to it. 
We are asked how the clergy are so more chiefly and 
notoriously to be blamed in this matter of upholding 
slavery than any other portion of our social system, 
such, for instance, as the merchants, the lawyers, and 
the manufacturers. All these support slavery, as far 
as it is their interest to do so, and surely the church 
does no more. But the answer to this is plain and 
conclusive. If the church claimed to be nothing 
more than a gathering together of private citizens 






C so ] 

on certain days of the week, then its opinions would 
carry no greater weight than the proceedings of a 
town meeting or a political caucus. In truth, as far 
as religion has anything to do with politics, the 
clergyman stands in precisely the same position as 
the chairman of a secular gathering. He is the 
mouthpiece of the opinions of the majority. He is 
an instrument whose sound lives upon the breath of 
the parishioners, and upon which their fingers can 
play what tune they please. Now if the church be 
only the frail fabric of social convenience, if it be 
only a part of our civilized machinery for getting 
along, surely it would be the duty of a wise man, 
and the irresistible impulse of an independent one, 
to pay no more regard to its opinions than to those 
of any other of the thousand shapes into which policy 
has divided our social organization. The resolves of 
a church — for the sermon of the minister upon any 
point which involves the political or commercial in- 
terests of the parish may be considered as merely 
the expression of the sentiment of that parish — 
should be considered of no more omnipotent efficacy 
for the manufacture of absolute truth than the 
resolves of any other meeting. If the church, then, 
be a machine of man's contriving, abolitionists are 
neither fanatics nor infidels for denying its authority 
in matters of conscience, or for impeaching its purity 



C 31 ] 
at least as much as that of any other of the manifes- 
tations of society. 

But the church claims to be, and has convinced 
the great majority of men that it is, of more than 
human origin ; and whether we admit this claim to 
be valid or not, we have at least a right to demand 
of it that it shall maintain the position which it has 
secured for itself, or yield it to those who will better 
perform the functions demanded by that position. If 
the church be, then, the depository of truth, if its 
ministers have the sole charge of the conduit pipes 
for conveying the waters of truth to the rest of man- 
kind, it is our duty to complain if they cast impure 
and poisonous matter into that blessed reservoir, or 
if they allow the pipes to be so clogged that only a 
few drops of the precious elixir can ooze through 
their corrupted channels. 

If the church carry this divine authority with it, 
it should be always in advance of public opinion. It 
should not wait till the Washingtonians, by acting 
the part which, in virtue of the station it arrogates 
to itself, should have been its own, had driven it to 
sign the pledge and hold fellowship with the degraded 
and fallen. It should not wait until the abolition- 
ists, by working a change in the public sentiment of 
the people, have convinced it that it is more politic 
to sympathize with the slave than with the slave- 



C32 2 

owner, before it ventures to lisp the alphabet of anti- 
slavery. The glorious privilege of leading the for- 
lorn hope of truth, of facing the desperate waves of 
prejudice, of making itself vile in the eyes of men 
by choosing the humblest means of serving the 
despised cause of the Master it professes to worship, 
all these belong to it in right of the position it has 
assumed. 

Instead of timidly yielding to, and in many in- 
stances encouraging, the prejudices or the ignorant 
rage of the mob, it is the clergy themselves who 
should have been the victims (if any there must be) 
of the first wrath of assaulted sin. It is they who 
should have been mobbed, who should have endured 
insult and contumely. When they can produce cer- 
tificates of their having undergone this course of 
medical treatment, which the world always prescribes 
for those who are first brainstruck by the light of 
truth, they will have proved their right to the title 
they assume of being the messengers of God upon 
earth. Every new revelation of God is sure to be 
hooted at as a piece of insanity ; every early disciple 
of it is sure to be mobbed. The clergy have seldom 
seemed ambitious of this distinction. 

In many parts of Germany there are legends of 
buried churches and convents, whose bells are often 
heard, and in which, now and then, some person, by 



C33] 
a lucky chance, can hear the monks chanting the 
ritual of many centuries ago. It seems to us that the 
religion of our churches is of very much the same 
subterranean and traditionary kind. To one walk- 
ing in the pure light of the upper day, the sound of 
their service seems dim and far off, and if he catches 
a word here and there, it is in an obsolete language 
which does not appeal to the present heart and soul, 
but only to a vague reverence for what is ancient, a 
mysterious awe for what is past. 

The church is, in its true sense, merely the out- 
ward symbol of the religious sentiment as that sen- 
timent ought to be. When it becomes merely the 
symbol of that sentiment as it is, there is no longer 
any use or fitness in it, and it degrades the moral 
sense of the nation which it was its duty to elevate. 
Then it is time for all those who have some innate 
principle of religion, and who are therefore compe- 
tent to reform it, to begin an attack upon it which 
shall compel it to move forward in reality to that 
lofty stand which it has duped men into believing 
that it occupies already. The religious sentiment 
will seek its material development in some symbol or 
other, and as it advances in civilization and culture, 
so will its symbols become worthier and purer, and 
so much the more readily will it throw by its old 
and withered ones. To many of us it seems that 



C 34 ] 
the present form of the church is no more truly an 
emblem of divinity than is the fetich of the African, 
when we consider the relative moral advancement of 
the two nations who bow down before their respec- 
tive idols. The outward form of the church is, at 
present, nothing but a block of wood rudely carved, 
which we shall cast away for some purer image, and 
it will not be long before we shall wonder at our be- 
nightedness in allowing it room on the earth so long. 
The clergy should remember that men — as well as 
fishes — may become not only blind, but absolutely 
eyeless by too long dwelling in the dark. Nature 
provides only such organs as our situation renders 
absolutely necessary ; she gives no superfluity ; and 
if men's eyes have been for a long time shut tight 
against the light of truth, or by their subterranean 
condition unable to receive it, they will at last be- 
come incapable of the office for which they were 
originally intended. 



DANIEL WEBSTER 

"Mr. Edward Webster has arrived in town for the purpose of 
recruiting a company of volunteers for the Mexican War. He has 
taken this step, we understand, with the full approval of his dis- 
tinguished father." — (Boston Papers.) 

An a world like ours, where no man can afford to 
throw his sympathy away, we have always lamented 
as wasted that which Gray lavished on the " mute, 
inglorious Miltons," and those other purely imagi- 
nary gentlemen whose genius was smothered by cir- 
cumstances, and whom he has accordingly embalmed 
and buried in his country churchyard. No man ever 
yet had a genius for anything which he did not 
in one way or another contrive to show. Has not 
the development of genius, in spite of all the unto- 
wardness of fortune and station, become proverbial ? 
Surely, if ever any quality of mind might have 
" blushed unseen," that eminent faculty of Gover- 
nor Briggs for inconsistency (not that glorious in- 
consistency which turns from wrong to right, but 
that singular kind which is uneasy till it escapes 
from right to wrong), and for bringing himself into 



C36] 

disgrace with all honest men, might have done so. 
Yet we have seen this genius bowing the most un- 
promising circumstances to its will as if they had 
been blades of grass. No, we are well persuaded 
that these melancholic men and maids, who wander 
disconsolate through this great vineyard of God, 
the earth, fearing that they shall not " fulfil their 
destiny," as they call it, unable to find any tool to 
work withal which shall not harden their delicate 
palms, and dreading to work in God's sunlight lest 
they should become tanned to an uninteresting 
brown, are merely the transcendental wing of that 
huge army of locusts who live upon their neighbors, 
and who, to use the expressive rhyme of the country 
school dame, are simply afflicted with 

" The fever de lurk," 

whose symptoms, as defined in the second verse of 
the distich, are the having 

" Two stomachs to eat and nary one to work." 

These aesthetic Jeremy Diddlers need be under no 
apprehensions. Their " destiny," as far as we can 
comprehend it, is to cheat society out of so many 
decent members ; and they " fulfil " it to perfec- 
tion. 

Yet " might have been " is a melancholy phrase 
after all, and the saddest sight this world has to 



C 37 ] 
offer is that of great faculties debased from their 
legitimate function, and frittered away in the base 
uses of the world, 

" Of genius given and knowledge won in vain," 

of the eagle turned buzzard, and claiming only a 
bastard's inheritance in that sky where he should 
have soared supreme. Among the thousand and 
one so-called great men of this so-called demo- 
cracy, Daniel Webster always excites in us the most 
painful feeling of regret. A man who might have 
done so much, and who will die without having 
disburthened the weary heart of Humanity of one 
of its devouring griefs ! What has Freedom to 
thank Daniel Webster for? What has Peace ? What 
has Civilization? What has that true Conservatism, 
which consists in bringing the earth forward and 
upward to the idea of its benign Maker? In one 
word, how is God the better served, how are heaven 
and earth more at one for His having bestowed 
upon this man that large utterance, that divine 
faculty of eloquent speech? How was man made 
in the image of God, save that the capacity was 
given him of being an adequate representative on 
earth of some one of the attributes of the Great 
Father, and His loyal ambassador to man ? 

Who that has ever witnessed the wonderful mag- 



C 38 ] 
netism which Webster exerts over masses of men 
can doubt that his great powers have been staked 
against the chances of the presidential chair and 
lost, gambled, thrown away by the fortune of the 
dice ? The influence of his physical presence is pro- 
digious. He owes half his fame to it. At a late 
literary festival at Cambridge, when he entered, the 
ceremonies of the day were interrupted by a long 
thunder of applause, and we saw many reverend 
clergymen, with their faces all aglow, huzzaing a 
man whose private reputation can hardly be called 
immaculate, as if he had been the veritable prophet 
Daniel himself. We saw him when he defended 
himself in Faneuil Hall against the outraged Whig- 
gism of Boston for having retained his seat in the 
Tyler cabinet, and when the thronging audience 
came, not as usual to witness and decorate his ora- 
tion, but to sit, as it were, in judgment upon him. 
Many a better speech, both in the grandeur and the 
grace of his oratory, have we heard from Wendell 
Phillips, but never did we encounter a harder task 
than to escape the fascination of that magnificent 
presence of the man which worked so potently to 
charm the mind from a judicial serenity to an ad- 
miring enthusiasm. There he stood at bay, and that 
one man, with his ponderous forehead, his sharp, 
cliff-edged brows, his brooding thunderous eyes, his 



I 39 3 
Mirabeau mane of hair, and all those other nameless 
attributes of his lion-like port, seemed enough to 
overbalance and outweigh that great multitude of 
men who came as accusers, but who remained, so to 
speak, as captives, swayed to and fro by his aroused 
energy as the facile grain is turned hither and 
thither in mimic surges by the strong wind that 
runs before the thunder-gust. We have compared 
him to a Hon, yet perhaps that lazy strength of 
his might better be typified by a slightly changed 
quotation from that language, to display his shal- 
lowness, in which he has so sophomoric a fondness. 
Let us liken him, then, to an angry bull, to an 
" Epicuri di grege " taurus. 

No truly great man can find his adequate type 
among the animal, though men of any conceivable 
degree of mental power may. 

It is said that great occasions summon forth great 
minds to be their servants and to do their work. 
Rather, we should say, the world is full of great 
occasions, but only great minds can see them, and 
surrender themselves unreservedly to their dicta- 
tion. Such men as Washington are called providen- 
tial men. And so they are ; yet there were men of 
far greater intellectual capacity than Washington in 
the day of the Revolution. Washington had a great 
character, and it is in proportion as they possess 



[ 4 o ] 
this mysterious faculty (we may call it) that men 
make their mark upon their age, and are valued 
by posterity. Herein consists the great strength 
of such men as Garrison, and it is precisely here 
that "Webster is wanting. Foolish critics, and others 
who cannot see beyond the narrow horizon of lit- 
erary effort, have defined genius to be the crea- 
tive power. It is not truly what a man creates, but 
what he is created that stamps him as a genius, as 
one heaven-sent. The man of talent is he who has 
his faculties most at command, who can use them 
glibly to produce results — the only kind of creation 
granted to man. But the man of genius is jyossessed 
by that guardian genius of his, and is led by it, not 
to the downy seats of worldly prosperity and power, 
but into the wilderness, as it were, there to brood 
over his fore-reaching thoughts, to commune with 
his own bitter tears and racking heart struggles, till 
he is sent forth, baptized in fire, a prophet and 
reformer. Not to the easily climbed pinnacles of 
earthly renown, but to the difficult, lone, and mel- 
ancholy summits of a clearer and broader moral 
vision is he led during his life. 

Will God decide that the occasion has been want- 
ing to Daniel Webster? How far might not that 
trumpet voice have reached, in behalf of the op- 
pressed, from the commanding position conceded to 



[41 2 
his powerful intellect ! How many might it not 
have aroused who now sleep, forgetful of their duty 
to their fellow-man ! God has given him eminent 
faculties, and what is the harvest ? Will they who 
from among the crowding tares of the world glean 
the sparse wheat ears for God's hungry poor, be 
forced to pull down their barns and build greater 
because Daniel "Webster has lived ? He has made 
some "great" speeches in defence of the tariff. 
He has defended from the insults of a worthless 
slave trader that state which, were it indeed worthy 
of his eulogy, were it the old Bay State of former 
days, would never have suffered a cowardly gover- 
nor to impeach the integrity of a noble common- 
wealth by issuing his proclamation in behalf of a 
slave-trading, murderous, and unholy war. He has 
won the title of "Defender of the Constitution " by 
his zeal in fostering the corrupt public sentiment 
which sets the political shifts of men above the law 
of nature and of God. He has settled the north- 
eastern boundary. He has, in accordance with that 
axiom of natural philosophy which declares that ex 
nihilo nihil fit, reduced Charles Jared Ingersoll to 
nothing by a speech in which he descended even 
below the vulgar level of his assailant. And finally, 
he has sent his youngest son (a youth who has just 
about brains enough to be conveniently come at by 



C 42 ] 

a cannon ball) to Boston to recruit a company for 
the Mexican war, as if his subserviency to the 
slave power had not already amply atoned for his 
f ederalism in the last war, and richly earned for him 
the title of patriot as it is understood in America. 
Shall not the Recording Angel write Ichdbod after 
the name of this man in the great book of Doom ? 
What voice of one enfranchised man, what saving 
testimony of a single great truth made clearer, of a 
single human sorrow made lighter, shall plead for a 
reversal of the decree ? 

There was a moment when expediency seemed to 
be dragging Webster into the ranks of anti-slavery. 
But with expediency at the helm, no man, however 
mighty his powers, ever made a prosperous voyage, 
or dropped anchor at last in the sheltered haven of 
that pure fame which alone can claim 

" The perfect witness of all-judging Jove." 

At the time when the Texas plot was ripening 
towards its infamous consummation, a public meet- 
ing was called in Boston to protest against this new 
encroachment of the slaveholding oligarchy. It was 
rumored that Webster would speak at this meeting, 
and such was unquestionably his intention. But 
the great lords of commerce and manufacture held 
themselves aloof. They would needfully avoid not 



C 43 ] 
only the reality but even the remote suspicion of 
treason against Mammon. The heart of the old 
Bay State was so mummy-wrapped in cotton as to 
give no audible beat, and Webster, governed by his 
friends, and persuaded that his diagnosis from the 
pulse of the commonwealth was incorrect, stayed 
away and held his peace. 

Had he gone, that one act might have saved him. 
The fervor, the inspiration, the glorious delirium of 
standing for the first time face to face with a great 
principle, might have snatched him away as in a 
fiery chariot from the narrow, conventional sphere 
which had enthralled him. Once more God said, 
Behold the occasion ! and the man slunk away to 
be for life the defender of the " Constitution," when 
he might have been the champion of Freedom and 
of Man ! Once more a vision of the president's 
chair hung like a cloud before his eyes, and blotted 
out that golden throne among the immortals which 
stood empty for him ! 

Verily, we say again, there is no sadder sentence 
than " might have been." 



THE FRENCH REVOLUTION OF 

1848 



w. 



hat may be the result of the last revolution 
in France we of course cannot take upon ourselves 
definitely to prophesy. That we have seen the last 
of kingship there is, we think, beyond a question. 
When the idea of royalty had still so much of 
vitality in it that it was considered necessary to 
chop off the head — the least valuable part — of a 
poor bewildered monarch, it was not an impossible 
thing for the Holy Alliance to make another Bour- 
bon adhere to the throne of France with the sacred 
paste of legitimacy. But when a king has been, not 
beheaded, but (we shudder to say it) kicked, what 
glue can the diplomatists invent strong enough to 
stick him in his seat again, or another in his stead ? 
Louis Philippe extinguished the last sparks of 
loyalty in France as effectually as if that had been 
the one object of his eighteen years' reign. He 
had made monarchy contemptible. He had been a 
stockjobber, a family matchmaker. The French had 

seen their royalty gradually 

" melt, 
Thaw, and resolve itself into a Jew." 



[ 45 ] 

During a long and peaceful reign the king had 
in no way contrived to grow on to the people. He 
was in no sense of the word a head to them. A 
nation can be loyal to a man, or to the representa- 
tive of an idea. Louis Philippe was neither. When 
all the royalty of France can be comfortably driven 
out of it in a street-cab, one would think the experi- 
ment of a republic might be safely ventured upon. 
To us the late events in Paris seem less a revolution 
than the quiet opening of a flower which, before it 
can blossom, must detrude the capsule which has 
hitherto enveloped and compressed it. 

We have not been surprised at the coolness with 
which the news of the liberation of the French 
people has been received by many of our leading 
American journalists. There is in this country a 
large class of persons who seem to consider that the 
tendency of all republics is toward anarchy. They 
are unable to perceive that a government is secure 
and stable exactly in proportion as the interests of 
all are most clearly represented in it. They dignify 
with the respectable name of Conservatism a stupid 
adherence to the makeshift Present, and a total 
want of faith in, or comprehension of, the future. 
This hold-back kind of conservatism is as if a man 
should carefully place a log in the middle of a rail- 
road track to prevent the possible catastrophe of 



C 46 ] 

the train's running off before it reach the end of 
its journey. It providently makes sure of a smash 
somewhere to get rid of the chance of one some- 
where else. Persons of this stamp cannot shake off 
the prepossession that a certain amount of sham is 
necessary to the well-governing of a people. They 
cannot perceive that the idea of government has 
been steadily culminating toward that point where 
it could best satisfy certain great desires and in- 
stincts of humanity. Their notion of government 
is the good old John Bull one, that it is solely an 
institution for the preservation of the property of 
those who have it, and of the bones and sinews of 
those who have it not, to the end that the aforesaid 
property may be further increased. The only New 
Testament doctrine of which they have an adequate 
conception is, that to him who hath shall be given, 
and from him who hath not shall be taken even that 
which he hath. These otherwise worthy persons 
are so completely behind this age that the dust of 
it gets in their eyes. They sympathize with Louis 
Philippe in his dethronement, and quite forget the 
sympathy due to the people he had dethroned. 

For ourselves, whether the movement now begun 
in France fail outwardly or not, we rejoice at it. If 
the people are not yet ripe for it, their failure will 
help them to become so. We rejoice at it none the 



[47 ] 
less as the first revolution in human history at the 
bottom of which lies the idea of the people, of 
social reorganization and regeneration. The first 
English Revolution was a revolt of the middle 
classes. There were republicans among the leaders 
of it, and there were men who cried out for King 
Jesus and meant King Log ; but the people were 
quite inadequate to self-government, and Cromwell 
became necessary. The only change from the old 
system of affairs was that a head was put at the 
apex of the state instead of a mask. The second 
English revolution was one of the aristocracy result- 
ing in a mere change of dynasty. Our own revo- 
lution was rather a separation from Great Britain, 
and did not produce any striking social change. It 
is true that speculative minds, like Jefferson's, in 
advance of their time, incorporated certain radical 
ideas with the declaration put forth by the United 
Colonies. But if those ideas were enthusiastically, 
they were not appreciatingly, received. It is true 
that the farmers at Concord Bridge, as Emerson has 
strikingly said, 

• 
" Fired the shot heard round the world," 

but they were not conscious of the mighty effects 
to flow from that little touch of their fingers upon 
the trigger. If our people had understood their 



[ 48 3 
own Declaration of Independence, the roots of slav- 
ery would never have been allowed to strike into 
and split asunder the very foundations of our so- 
cial institutions. The first French Revolution was 
only the natural recoil of an oppressed and imbruted 
people. If the men who attempted to ride that 
whirlwind had been competent to the occasion, they 
would have looked forward, and would not have 
raked for a system among the ruins of ancient 
Rome. Popular rights have doubtless been ad- 
vanced by all these great movements, and the masses 
have gradually been getting to be considered as 
something different in kind from water-power and 
steam, though identical with them in use. It is 
found that the little spark of God in them makes 
them uneasy under systems of legislation which 
might be welcomed with a self-forgetting patriotism 
by water-wheels and spinning-jennies. The shadow 
cast on the wall by the last French Revolution, 

" with fear of change 
Perplexing monarchs," 

is not that oi the armed man of the old republic, 
but of a simple workman in his blouse. And mon- 
archs are not the only persons perplexed by it. 

People have been so long used to the idea that the 
cream of this world is meant for the few, and that the 



C 49 ] 
sky-blue left after a second skimming, and enriched 
with a few rhetorical flourishes, is the appropriate 
portion of the many, that they cannot accustom their 
minds to the contemplation of any other system of 
partition. There would seem to be some mathemat- 
ical deficiency in their mental organization which 
unfits them for the commonest sum in simple divi- 
sion, while at the same time they display great pro- 
ficiency in multiplication and addition. One may 
laugh safely now at the divine right of kings ; but 
it is impiety to meddle with the divine right of 
institutions, and not far short of downright athe- 
ism to question the [theological] divinity that doth 
hedge pauperism, slavery, and other such blotches 
of our self-satisfied nineteenth century. Many re- 
spectable persons are shocked at the impropriety 
of a government which talks face to face with the 
people, and (whether it be from an innate respect 
for laziness or not) are still more outraged that 
it should give them a pledge of work. And for a 
provisional government to promise the people pro- 
visions ! To us there is something unspeakably 
touching in the spectacle of a mob (as they are 
called) of successful insurgents satisfied with the 
hope of work. Is there no advance here ? Is not 
this cry for work better than the old pane?n et cir- 
censes ? But then the Fourierites are at the bottom 



C 50 } 
of it. If so, we say, God bless them ! For this is 
the first revolution we ever read of in which the 
larger share of the blood shed has flowed from the 
veins of the conqueror. No doubt Charles Fourier 
was a terrible man. He had other things under- 
neath his skull than dura and pia maters. There 
were great ideas throbbing there, and, if these ideas 
have worked their way downward to the masses, so 
much the better. In that case we look upon the 
success of the revolution as certain, for we have no 
dread of anarchy among a people in whom ideas 
have taken the place of instincts. 

And indeed it is exactly here that our chief con- 
fidence centres. Not only are the French a scientific 
people, and therefore the better capable of appre- 
ciating order and system, but they are also an emi- 
nently receptive people, swift to appreciate and 
assimilate an idea. In this respect they are the 
reverse of the English race, which clings tenaciously 
to an idea already received, but is very slow to ac- 
cept any new one. Moreover, the French have always 
shown a fluency in adapting themselves to circum- 
stances, such as no other nation has ever exhibited. 
Hence the success of their missionaries. But why 
look about us for ground of hope and confidence ? 
We, who believe not in a dead but in a living God, 
not in a God who has ended His work, who has 



C 51 ] 
done with His world, and set it adrift to seethe and 
simmer, and at last to crystallize into such shape 
as it may, but in one who still moves and works 
in the midst of us, and uses us to forward His har- 
monious design, need no other source of trust and 
security. 



SHALL WE EVER BE REPUB- 
LICAN? 

V oltaire said that the English went mad once in 
seven years ; that is, the electors among them. It 
was one of their constitutional guarantees. This 
privilege of losing their heads septennially was a 
concession which they obtained either by taking 
off that of the first Charles, or by the revolution 
which resulted from the second James's never hav- 
ing had any. We, who have improved upon the 
British system in so many important particulars, 
have not neglected one so important as this. Not 
only are we allowed to indulge ourselves in this 
luxury as American citizens, at proper and not too 
infrequent intervals, but, as inhabitants of particular 
states and cities, or as members of yet more minutely 
subdivided corporations, we are enabled to render its 
blessings perennial. Conservative minds who con- 
sider it necessary that God and nature should be 
assisted here, checked there, and generally modified 
by the wiser counsels of property, esteem this as the 
great safeguard of our institutions. Their theory, 



C 53 ] 
though not precisely so stated, amounts to this — 
that the minds of the people must be kept constantly 
employed about the shadows of power to prevent 
their hands from grasping at the substance, and to 
neutralize the activity of that organ of destructive- 
ness which includes more or less of the brain in 
proportion as the pocket is emptier or fuller. The 
balances of commonwealths can only be kept even 
by throwing the dust of them into the eyes of the 
masses. It is truly ludicrous to see the importance 
which the American people attach to the getting one 
or the other shell of a presidential election. They 
seem to consider that they have nothing to do with 
the oyster. 

Under the modern forms of monarchical govern- 
ment, it has been found that, provided the stomachs 
of the people are filled to the point of a certain ascer- 
tained minimum, the residue may be profitably stuffed 
with sham. With us, plenty has hitherto precluded 
the necessity of employing this economical esculent, 
except for the purpose of habituating the system 
to its use in advance. The experiment here seems 
to be to discover how far the old style of government 
can get along if it be called by another name. As 
much complication of machinery as possible is inter- 
posed between the will of the people and the objects 
it may be desirous to exercise itself upon. Brother 



C 54 ] 
Jonathan was a great deal too shrewd to take the 
pills of despotism from the hand of the regular prac- 
titioners, but will swallow them by the handful if 
prescribed by quacks. Political theorists tell us that 
the people are led by their interests, by the passion 
of the moment, by their prejudices, and what not ; 
but in point of fact they have never been led in any 
other than the good old-fashioned method, namely 
— by their noses. Despotisms attain their ends by 
grinding the faces of their subjects. All that appar- 
ently restrains us from the same practice seems to 
be that it would endanger a feature so useful in the 
administration of affairs. Nevertheless, we get along 
tolerably well. We have got a very pretty war, a re- 
spectable standing army, and a very long bill to pay. 
However it may have been in theory, it has never 
become practically understood that governments are 
intended solely for the advantage of the many. What 
difference does it make whether an aspirant for office 
cringe to a president or a king, whether he bribe the 
mistress of some anointed majesty with gold, or the 
sovereign people with fawning and sophistry? As 
far as our national government is concerned, we do 
not deserve the name of a free people. Whenever 
there has been the least danger of its expressing the 
great idea which nominally underlies our institutions, 
slavery has put her bloody hand over its mouth. She 



[55 ] 
has gone on from usurpation to usurpation, till we 
have forgotten that we ever intended to be free. She 
has taught us to cringe and palter and equivocate. 
She has been the source of every political evil that 
has befallen us. She has not allowed us a single 
statesman, but hordes of shufflers and trimmers. Is 
it not a degrading fact that a man's being known is 
enough to prevent his having any hope of the presi- 
dency ? The two great parties are equally corrupt. 
They would vote for the devil — provided he were a 
slaveholder. It is because slavery has made our great 
intellects blind that we are ruled by our little ones. 
Men in prominent positions are obliged to wink at so 
many things that they at last come to the conclusion 
that it saves time to keep their eyes shut altogether. 
We produce great speakers by the score, but never a 
great doer — except of mischief. 

This state of things has not been the fault of 
the people, but of their teachers. Men have found 
it easier to govern them by tradition than by truth. 
They have been instructed to consider allegiance to 
a piece of striped bunting of deeper import than 
loyalty to Truth herself. Demagogues care not how 
muddy the stream which floats them into office, even 
though it be turbid with blood. The people, mean- 
while, go on laying the golden eggs, but will by and 
by discover that they are geese for doing it. 



156 2 

People talk a great deal of the tyranny of Public 
Opinion. It is not this we groan under, but rather 
the public want of Opinion. The majority of our 
statesmen have no opinions on any subject whatever. 
They have prospective opinions, contingent opinions, 
opinions subject to the decision of national conven- 
tions, opinions on both sides of any matter, opinions 
that they are very fit persons for the presidency, but 
as to true, definite opinions, by which we mean sin- 
cere results of judgment based on the consideration 
of absolute right, they have them not. Instead of 
trying to form and direct public sentiment, they sim- 
ply endeavor to find out what it is and to pamper it. 
Possibly they think that, as two negatives make an 
affirmative, the adding together of their own want of 
principle and the people's want of intelligence may 
produce an enlightened honesty. So accustomed are 
the masses to this state of things, that they will give 
their votes much more readily for a man who pro- 
claims himself the disciple of somebody else, than 
for one who is his own master. Jefferson and Jack- 
son still rule us from their urns, and we are gov- 
erned more by the dead past than by a regard to 
the present or future. 

The condition into which affairs have gradually 
sunk is astounding. Our government is as abso- 
lutely a distinct thing from the people as that of 



C57 ] 
Nicholas. If it were otherwise, would such a debate 
as the recent one in Congress on the French sympa- 
thy resolves have been possible ? We believe that the 
genuine instincts of the people would sympathize 
heartily with the abolition of slavery in the French 
Colonies, if they were only allowed a chance to ex- 
press themselves. A noble sentiment will always 
carry the field against a mean one if fair play be 
maintained. We have institutions for teaching the 
Blind and the Deaf Mutes the management of their 
faculties, but are more sadly in need of one to give 
our Northern Representatives lessons in the use of 
their backbones. There is scarce a half dozen of 
them who know how to stand tolerably upright. 

The truth is that we have never been more than 
nominal republicans. We have never got over a cer- 
tain shamefacedness at the disrespectability of our 
position. We feel as if when we espoused Liberty we 
had contracted a mesalliance. The criticism of the 
traveller who looks at us from a monarchical point of 
view exasperates us. Instead of minding our own 
business we have been pitifully anxious as to what 
would be thought of us in Europe. We have had 
Europe in our minds fifty times, when we have had 
God and Conscience once. Our literature has en- 
deavored to convince Europeans that we are as like 
them as circumstances would admit. The men who 



[58] 

have the highest and boldest bearing among us are 
the slaveholders. We are anxious to be acknow- 
ledged as one of the great Powers of Christendom, 
forgetful that all the fleets and navies in the world 
are weak in comparison with one sentence in the De- 
claration of Independence. When every other argu- 
ment in favor of our infamous Mexican war had 
been exhausted, there was this still left — that it 
would make us more respected abroad. We are afraid 
of our own principles as a raw recruit of his musket. 
As far as the outward machinery of our government 
is concerned, we are democratic only in our predilec- 
tion for little men. 

When will man learn that the only true conser- 
vatism lies in growth and progress, that whatever 
has ceased growing has begun to die ? It is not the 
conservative, but the retarding element which resides 
in the pocket. It is droll to witness the fate of 
this conservatism when the ship of any state goes 
to pieces. It lashes itself firmly to the ponderous 
anchor it has provided for such an emergency, cuts 
all loose, and — goes to the bottom. There are a 
great many things to be done in this country, but 
the first is the abolition of slavery. If it were not so 
arrant a sin as it is, we should abolish it (if for no 
other reason) than that it accustoms our public men 
to being cowards. We are astonished, under the pre- 



[59 3 
sent system, when a Northern representative gets so 
far as to surmise that his sonl is his own, and make 
a hero of him forthwith. But we shall never have 
that inward fortunateness, without which all outward 
prosperity is a cheat and delusion, till we have torn 
up this deadly Upas, no matter with what dear or 
sacred things its pestilential roots may be entwined. 



PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATES 



T 



he only thing we can conceive of which could 
prevent any given individual from becoming Presi- 
dent of the United States would be his purchasing 
a copy of The Complete Letterwriter, and devot- 
ing himself to an enthusiastic course of epistolary 
composition. In one after another of the presiden- 
tial candidates this epidemic displays itself, and 
finally becomes fatal. As it is not so much the 
fashion in America as in France to elevate men of 
letters to public office, we find it hard to account 
for the foolhardiness with which the risk of this 
contagion is encountered. General Harrison, it is 
understood, was surrounded with the cordon sani- 
taire of a committee. No prisoner in Spielberg was 
ever more cautiously deprived of the use of writing 
materials. The soot was carefully scraped from the 
chimney-flues ; outposts of expert rifle-shooters ren- 
dered it certain death for any goose (who came clad 
in feathers) to approach within a certain specified 
distance of North Bend ; and all the domestic fowls 
about the establishment were reduced to the condi- 



tion of Plato's original man. By these energetic 
precautions the General was saved. At the next 
election Mr. Clay and Mr. Van Buren each con- 
trived to make for himself a political winding-sheet 
out of a single sheet of medium foolscap. 

During the present canvass Mr. Clay, like Man- 
talini, has committed suicide for the second time, 
General Scott has managed to drown himself in so 
shallow a thing as a hasty plate of soup, and Gen- 
eral Taylor is in a fair way to dispatch himself by 
proving conclusively that his dispatches were done 
by somebody else. Mr. Hale, a man of strong com- 
mon-sense, though provided with writing materials 
gratis, has exercised hitherto an exalted self-denial. 
We have seen but two letters of Mr. Gerritt Smith's 
which might be supposed to bear upon his expected 
nomination for the presidency. Both of them did 
quite too much honor to his head and heart to insure 
him more than a very limited vote. It seems to be 
generally granted that it is important for the Amer- 
ican People to know as little as possible about their 
proposed candidate, and that the only feasible plan 
for them is to buy another pig in a Polk. 

The title of General appears to be the first condi- 
tion of availability. To acquire this crowning merit 
Messrs. Caleb Cushing and Franklin Pierce devoted 
themselves to an arduous apprenticeship in Mexico. 



C 62 3 

The claims of General Tom Thumb, we understand, 
are strongly urged in some quarters. Indeed, to 
have had any connection, however remote, with mil- 
itary affairs, establishes a right to considerable in- 
fluence in settling the question of the candidacy. 
General Taylor's charger formed a conspicuous ele- 
ment in the procession at New Orleans, and, as 
Heliogabalus raised his horse to the consulship, " Old 
Whitey," if not a candidate himself, may pay off 
the debt of gratitude incurred by his race by assist- 
ing his master to the presidential chair. 

General Taylor's claims may be very shortly 
summed up. He is a general, a slaveholder, and 
nobody knows what his opinions are. There is a 
good deal of strength in these qualifications, no 
doubt. As to his having employed bloodhounds in 
the Florida War, we think he displayed both wis- 
dom and humanity, for it was a service much better 
suited to bloodhounds than to men. To those who 
raise objections on the score of his slaveholding, it 
is answered that he is a mild one, and that he 
was born and bred to it. Should it ever unhappily 
chance that any of his partisans find themselves in 
the larder of his Majesty of the Cannibal Islands, 
they will have the satisfaction of knowing that they 
will be chewed mildly, with a due regard for the 
claims of humanity, and by a person born and bred 



[ 63 ] 
to the occupation. Mr. Abbott Lawrence has dis- 
covered striking traits of similarity between General 
Taylor and General Washington. But Mr. L. is a 
candidate for the vice-presidency, and of course it 
would be expected that the bobs should express a 
high opinion of the kite which is to carry them 
up. There is one point of resemblance, unquestion- 
ably. The title of General belongs equally to both. 
But then Caleb Cushing is a general, too, — not to 
mention Gideon J. Pillow. 

Mr. Clay was formerly an available candidate by 
reason of his being the embodiment of the great 
American principle of compromise. This new method 
of parting the goats upon the left hand and the 
sheep upon the right was to strike an apparently 
even balance between them, and make it as com- 
fortable to the goats as possible by contriving to 
have the largest and best pasture on the left side. 
But latterly it has been found inconvenient to make 
even a compromise between right and wrong. The 
goats have broken through the fence, driven the 
sheep quite out, and established matters to suit 
themselves. Consequently, we require a Tityrus 
adapted to the new order of things. 

Mr. Woodbury has been spoken of as having a 
chance for the nomination of the Democratic Party ; 
but Mr. Charles Gag Atherton possesses so much 



C 6 * 3 

larger claims, based on the same kind of merit, that 
it would be hardly fair to overlook him. However, 
among the great crowd of applicants, his being so 
very small might lead to that result. General Cass 
also has been several times mentioned (by himself) as 
an eligible person. It is a proverb, at least as old 
as Montaigne, that the world is inclined to take 
people at their own valuation. In this case Gen- 
eral Cass would be an economical candidate to any 
party, as he has commonly offered himself very low 
indeed. 

The Massachusetts Whigs have brought forward 
Mr. Webster. Had the great defender of the Con- 
stitution been endowed with a heart in any adequate 
proportion to his head, he would have been Presi- 
dent before this. Men admire boldness even on the 
wrong side. It is this feeling that has given to Mr. 
Calhoun two thirds of his reputation for ability. 
But men, sooner or later, learn to reverence cour- 
age on the side of right. Still better, they learn to 
trust in it. The posthumous honors paid to John 
Quincy Adams should give a lesson to our states- 
men. The very people whom, for their own sake, 
he had braved proclaimed his ashes sacred. The 
people would be glad of a great man if they could 
get him. Where all are shams, they choose the 
biggest as the most meritorious. If they cannot 



[<5S ] 
have something perfect, they would fain have some- 
thing as perfect in its kind as possible. 

That Mr. Webster has a great intellect it would 
be folly to deny. But the crisis demands, not so 
much a maker of great speeches, as a doer of great 
deeds. Mr. Webster, it is true, has laid claim to the 
Wilmot proviso as " his thunder," and, if we have 
come to that pass that it is a merit in a man to be 
opposed to the establishment of slavery in new terri- 
tory, we are quite willing to concede his claim. In 
his recent speech on the Mexican War we do not 
remember that he made any allusion to his thunder, 
except in saying that his opposition to new territory 
was not a "sentimental one," — a phrase borrowed 
of Mr. Caleb Cushing, and of sufficiently notorious 
meaning. Mr. Cushing was paid for it by being 
deported to China. We confess that Mr. Webster's 
thunder seems to us very much of the same quality 
as that of Sahnoneus in the old Greek fable. We 
fancy that if his pitch and tow thunderbolt were to 
be suddenly changed to the genuine article in his 
hands, no one would drop it more expeditiously than 
himself. Mr. W. is a great speaker, and has had 
occasions enough offered him to utter himself on 
the side of right, yet he has maintained a longer 
than Pythagorean silence. 

But there is little profit in discussing the relative 



C 66 1 

merits of different candidates. The successful one 
will probably be somebody of whom no one ever 
heard before, and whom no one will wish to hear of 
again. As long as the people continue absorbed in 
those two great ends of a rational being, getting and 
keeping, it will matter very little to the cause of 
humanity and right who shall become tenant of the 
White House. There is, at least, a little malicious 
satisfaction in the thought that none of our great 
men, who have earned that title by great sacrifices 
of principle to themselves, have any chance what- 
ever. Let us recommend to the study of all such 
the following extract from John Wesley's journal, 
detailing a conversation between himself and a 
Chickasaw Indian. Wesley asks him, " How came 
your nation by the knowledge they have ? " The 
answer of the savage is : " As soon as ever the 
ground was sound and fit to stand upon, it came to 
us, and has been with us ever since. But we are 
young men ; our old men know more ; but all of 
them do not know. There are but a few whom the 
Beloved One chooses from childhood, and is in 
them, and takes care of them, and teaches them. 
They know these things, mid our old men practise, 
therefore they know ; hut I do not iwaetise, there- 
fore I know little." 

This kind of knowledge which arises from the 



C 6 ? 1 

open and frank practice of justice, honor, and right, 
may be recommended as a safe prescription for 
statesmen generally, and for our own in particular. 
Certificates of its efficacy may be obtained from the 
French Provisional Government. 



AN IMAGINARY CONVERSATION 

Mr. Calhoun. Mr. Foote. Gen. Cass. 

mr. calhoun 

A hese recent disgraceful outrages in the District 
of Columbia strike a heavy blow at rational liberty 
all over the world. Who will credit that property 
(the cement which binds together all modern politi- 
cal fabrics) can be secure under republican insti- 
tutions, when it is thus rudely invaded within the 
very jurisdiction of our highest legislative assem- 
bly? 

MR. F O O TE 

It is a sentiment of the Bible, I believe, that 
riches have the wings of the morning and fly to the 
uttermost parts of the earth. But the South labors 
under this greater misfortune, that her property is 
endowed with legs and a kind of brute instinct 
(understanding I will not call it) to use them in a 
northerly direction. It is a crowning mercy that 
God has taken away the wings from our wealth. 
The elder patriarchs were doubtless deemed un- 



[6.9] 

worthy of this providential interference. It was 
reserved for Christians and Democrats. The legs 
we can generally manage, but it would have been 
inconvenient to be continually clipping the wings, 
not to mention possible damage to the stock. For 
these and other comforts make us duly thankful ! 

MR. CASS 

My Friend Louis Philippe — ah, I had forgotten ; 
I should have said my late friend — 

MR. CALHOUN 

The unfortunate are never the friends of the wise 
man. 

MR. CASS 

I was about to say that the Count de Neuilly has 
often remarked to me that we were fortunate in 
having so conservative an element as " persons held 
to service or labor " (I believe I do not venture be- 
yond safe Constitutional ground), mingled in a just 
proportion with our otherwise too rapidly progres- 
sive institutions. There is no duty of a good states- 
man, he said, at once so difficult and so necessary 
as that of keeping steadily behind his age. But, 
however much satisfaction a sound politician who 
adheres to this theory may reap in the purity of his 
own Conscience, he will find that the dust incident 
to such a position will sometimes so choke him as 
to prevent his giving an intelligible answer to the 



n 70 3 

often perplexing questions of his Constituents. Yet 
I know not whether in such exigencies a cough be 
not the safest, as it is the readiest, reply. It is an 
oracle susceptible of any retrospective interpreta- 
tion. 

MR. CALHOUN 

A politician who renders himself intelligible has 
put a rope round his own neck, and it would be 
strange indeed if his opponents should be unable to 
find a suitable tree. The present Revolutionary Gov- 
ernment of France have taken many long strides 
toward the edge of that precipice which overhangs 
social and political chaos, but none longer than in 
bringing government face to face with the people. 
That government is the most stable which is the 
most complicated and the most expensive. Men ad- 
mire most what they do not understand, and cling 
tightest to what they have paid, or are paying, most 
for. They love to see money spent liberally by 
other people, and have no idea that every time 
Uncle Sam unbuttons his pocket he has previously 
put his hand into their own. I have great fears for 
France. The Provisional Government talks too much 
and too well, — above all it talks too clearly. In 
that wild enthusiasm generated by the turmoil of 
great and sudden social changes, and by contact 
with the magnetism of excited masses of men, senti- 



n 71 : 

ments are often uttered which, however striking and 
beautiful they might be if their application were 
restricted to the Utopias of poetry, are dangerous 
in their tendencies and results if once brought into 
contact with the realities of life. Despotisms pro- 
fited more than the Catholic Church by shutting up 
Christ in the sepulchre of a dead language. A pru- 
dent and far-seeing man will confine his more in- 
spired thoughts to the solitude of his closet. If 
once let loose, it is impossible to recall these winged 
messengers to the safer perch of his finger. He may 
keep an aviary of angels if he will, but he must 
be careful not to leave the door open. They have 
an unaccountable predilection for entering the hut 
of the slave and for seating themselves beside the 
hearth of the laborer. Mr. Jefferson, by embody- 
ing some hasty expressions in the Declaration of 
Independence, introduced explosive matter into our 
system. 

MR. FOOTE 

Yet Mr. Jefferson knew how to divorce the theo- 
retic from the practical. If he threw firebrands, it 
was not in the direction of his own house. Indeed, 
he commonly used them, as a prudent man ought, 
to keep his own pot a-boiling. His words elevated 
him to the presidency ; his works, in any commu- 
nity less patriarchally organized than that in which 



C 72 ] 
it was his good fortune to dwell, would have ele- 
vated him to the gallows. If, for the sake of appear- 
ances, he declaimed against our wisest and most 
cherished institution, he was neither so thriftless nor 
so inhuman as to turn the Ishmaels he had begotten 
into the desert. He was a prudent and economical 
farmer of all the qualities of his nature. If he 
made his organ of language profitable to him as a 
politician, he no less enriched his pocket as a pri- 
vate citizen by his philoprogenitiveness. 

MR. CALHOUN 

Mr. Jefferson, like all theorists, was a dangerous 
man. Hesiod might have taught him that in utter- 
ing political axioms, the half is better than the 
whole. Concessions to the vague instincts of the 
populace are always unsafe ; if made in advance, 
they are insane. Words are the paper-currency of 
statesmen, but to inspire confidence they must be 
supposed to rest on a specie-basis of deeds. Panics 
are continually arising to create a run upon the 
banks, and at such a crisis they are safest who have 
the least of the representative currency in circula- 
tion. 

MR. CASS 

Mr. Jefferson may have been a dangerous man, 
yet we owe him a large debt of gratitude. His 
paper money, as you call it, has enabled us hitherto 



L 73 2 
to purchase the votes of the Northern Democracy 
and to keep the reins of government in our own 
hands. As yet but a very small fraction of the Dem- 
ocratic Party hi the free states is demanding specie. 
I have generally found brass to answer tolerably well 
as a metallic basis. 

MR. FOOTE 

Yet even that small fraction is enough to produce 
serious inconvenience. The license permitted to pub- 
he meetings at the North is of a very demoralizing 
tendency. If hordes of work-people are allowed to 
gather together and express their ignorant sympa- 
thy with armed resistance to legitimate authority in 
France, Germany, and Ireland, will an imaginary 
barrier, like Mason and Dixon's line, suffice to pre- 
vent the spread of their contaminating insubordi- 
nation ? May not their sympathies take a wider (I 
should say a narrower) range ? 

MR. CALHOUN 

I have no fear of it at present. If, as moralists 
tell us, the instinct of looking up be innate in the 
human mind, the desire of having something to 
look down upon is no less so. The Northern opera- 
tives are quite willing to have everybody brought 
down to their own level, but they would think twice 
before stretching a hand to lift any one up to it. 
The contempt for the negro in the Free States saves 



C74] 
us the expense of many handcuffs at the South. As 
long as men can talk freely, they are the less dis- 
posed to think deliberately and to reason soundly. 
Could some new Pythagoras impose a seven years' 
silence on our reformers, I should tremble as the 
eighth year drew nigh. As long as we have peace 
and surplus land, we are safe. Remove the dis- 
turbing element of hunger, and the great masses of 
men do not remain long in solution. They crystal- 
lize rapidly and firmly into the old forms. Allow a 
people to talk about their wrongs freely, and they 
are no longer immediately dangerous. They in- 
stantly split into factions and quarrel as to the fit- 
ting remedy. The private animosities of reformers 
are the bulwarks of existing abuses. The Commu- 
nist unites with the Abolitionist to destroy the Fou- 
rierist, and with the Fourierist to put down the 
Abolitionist. Each faction, also, possesses a poly- 
pus faculty of producing antagonizing influences. 
Even a dispute about Phonography will divert them 
for a week or two from saving the world. 

MR. FOOTE 

Yet such exhibitions of fanaticism as the one we 
have recently witnessed are disorganizing. What- 
ever assails the permanence of any species of pro- 
perty turns investments into securer channels. The 
pocket is the only barometer for the statesman. 



[ 75 ] 
Many of the negroes lately kidnapped were the 
property of persons with very limited means, in 
some cases of the widow and the orphan. The gen- 
tleman on whose religious instructions I attend very 
properly asked in his last Sunday's discourse if 
these incendiaries had forgotten the vengeance de- 
nounced by the Founder of our holy religion against 
the spoilers of the widow and the fatherless. One 
girl, I happened to know, belonged to a poor and 
pious widow of this city. The wench was nearly 
white, and of a figure approaching in beauty to 
Powers's Greek Captive, though more voluptuous in 
its proportions. Her mistress had lately refused fif- 
teen hundred dollars for her. I assure you she was 
well worth that and more, but this noble woman 
refused it. She denied herself the many luxuries 
which the money might have procured, in the hope 
of bequeathing her as a widow's mite to the Metho- 
dist Episcopal Church South. What punishment is 
severe enough for monsters who would cross the 
path of piety such as this ? 

MR. CASS 

If a Northern man who sincerely regrets the mis- 
fortune of his birth may be allowed to express any 
opinion on a matter of this delicacy, I should be 
inclined to say that the late unhappy outrage itself 
(unhappy, I mean, in its intention, for the kid- 



[76 3 
nappers were providentially balked in their nefari- 
ous design) was of less deleterious consequence than 
the debate which arose from it. Though the fanat- 
ics in both houses deserved all and more than all 
the polished denunciation which the senator from 
Mississippi and other gentlemen launched against 
$hem, yet I am one of those who think that punish- 
ments should be as private as possible. If one of 
your female servants should break a coffee-cup, you 
would not apply the corrective of the cart -whip 
(however proper it be in itself) before the windows 
of your drawing-room and within sight of a North- 
ern guest. 

MR. FOOTE 

We would chastise the jade in Faneuil Hall if 
we thought proper. Did the blood of my ancestors 
water every field of their country's glory, from 
Bunker's Hill to — to — to Buena Vista, for no- 
thing ? Is our noble Constitution a piece of waste- 
paper ? 

MB. CASS 

No doubt every high-minded Southern gentleman 
would do what was becoming a freeman under the 
circumstances ; and in the present instance I would 
pardon much to the natural indignation aroused by 
unprovoked and unparalleled outrage. Yet I ques- 
tion whether the noses of Northern constituencies 



C 77 2 
are not beginning to redden under the vicarious 
tweakings they have so long received through their 
waxen representatives here, as Virgil, you remember, 
supposes of Daphnis. They may be infected with a 
squeamish desire to send hither men with more sensi- 
tive features. For the sake of the Union, the whole 
of whose common blessings you have a just title to 
enjoy by yourselves, but a portion of which you 
have nevertheless generously extended in time past 
to such unworthy individuals as myself, I should 
deplore such a contingency. It would be a misfor- 
tune never to be remedied should the few remaining 
bonds of enlightened sympathy between the oppos- 
ing sections of our beloved country, the common 
mother and sustainer of us all, be rasped off in the 
unguardedness of angry debate. 

ME. CALHOUN 

You forget that you are not in the Senate. There 
never were any natural bonds, and there remain only 
the ragged stumps of those artificial ligatures con- 
trived by the framers of our policy. These grate 
sorely together at every jar of our system, and may 
well be spared. Two perfectly plane and polished 
surfaces adhere firmly together, while two rough ones 
fall asunder of their own weight unless one be kept 
carefully atop of the other. We have succeeded 
hitherto in keeping the South in this relation to 



[78 ] 

the North. You at the North are so far enough 
advanced in Democracy as to have extinguished the 
race of haughty and high-spirited gentlemen ; you 
have not yet advanced far enough to produce a race 
of self-centred and magnanimous men. You have 
many Cleons, but no Pericles. After all, a thread of 
cotton is strong enough to hold us together. I was 
in favor of a Tariff until Northern cotton manu- 
factories should be well established. It is they that 
have set us in the saddle, booted and spurred us, and 
put a whip in our hands. I am now in favor of free 
trade just so far as will keep our Northern hackney 
quiet in the harness. We must not give him too much 
oats. But he has worn blinders so long that his 
sight is weakened, and sheers from a bushel of corn. 

MR. CASS 

I am inclined to agree with Mr. Douglass that the 
tone of the late debates will tend to excite abolition 
feeling at the North. It is already too widely preva- 
lent. 

MR. FOOTE 

I have often been assured by Northern gentlemen, 
on whose intelligence I can rely, that the more re- 
spectable classes in the Free States are entirely sound 
on this point. Men of ability, desirous of lending 
their services to their country in the way of public 
office, are obliged to make concessions and to give 



I 79 ] 
pledges, but the feeling among the influential order 
is healthy. 

MR. CALHOUN 

Pledges of this kind give me no anxiety. They 
are the most perishable of commodities, and no pru- 
dent office would insure a eargo of them for so long 
a voyage as to Washington. Our safety is in the 
indifference of the laboring class. It is time now 
that the growth of manufactories in the free states 
should be checked. Just as soon as the operative 
class becomes overcrowded springs up the fatal ques- 
tion of the rights of labor and the duties of capital. 
Public sentiment grows upward and not downward. 
The whirlpool is narrower and swifter toward the 
bottom. Hitherto capital has had no duties except 
to itself, and it hardly seems more unnatural that it 
should own the laborer outright, than that it should 
buy the use of him at the cheapest rate. If labor 
may come into the market, why not the laborer him- 
self ? While political economists are buzzing about 
the divine relations of demand and supply, a f eeling 
is ripening underneath which will reduce the whole 
question to one of angry and irrepressible demand. 
When Hunger and Ignorance begin to reason to- 
gether, they talk in a language which your respect- 
able classes do not understand and cannot reply to. 
Why are we here ? they asked in France, and the 



C 8o 1 

throne of the most respectable monarch in Europe 
crumbled beneath him. Shakespeare has compared 
the stomach to a clock, and it is on the dial of such 
a clock that the last hour of slavery is numbered. 

MB. FO OTE 

It is a pity that there is no censorship of the press 
at the North. We have not only that, but an entire 
control of the Post Office also. 

MR. CASS 

The knowing on which side their bread is but- 
tered, which, so far as I can perceive, is the only 
kind of knowledge possessed by the majority of 
editors, exercises a stricter censorship than that of 
Nicholas. 

MR. FOOTE 

I took occasion in the debate to express a desire 
for the dissolution of the Union. It is always well 
to remind the North of the prosperity we should en- 
joy without her. By making alliances offensive and 
defensive with England and France — hem ! I had 
forgotten, — but no matter, dissolution under any 
circumstances would be preferable to these infidel 
assaults on our property and rights. Is it possible 
that we live in a Christian land, and in the nine- 
teenth century ? For a less outrage than the recent 
attempt at kidnapping, we chastised Tripoli in 18 — , 
I do not remember the precise date. The Tripolitans 



C 8l 1 

— or was it the Tunisians ? — had possessed them- 
selves of a few sailors, the color of whose skins made 
them comparatively valueless in a mercantile point 
of view. I have always questioned the expediency 
of our interference in that matter. Striking at the 
right of enslaving captives strikes at the legal fic- 
tion on which slavery is based. 

ME. CALHOUN 

The subject of dissolution is one upon which it 
is hardly safe to venture too far. Thin ice near the 
shore will sustain us, but gives way at a step farther 
out and over deeper water. In a fearfully short time 
from the period of rupture, the South would be a 
Black Republic. We should be obliged to strain 
the cord so tightly that it would snap. At present 
the piety and respectability of the North is the wet 
blanket which keeps our roof from taking fire. Re- 
move that, and how long should we be safe under 
the shower of sparks from all parts of the civilized 
world ? An alliance with France now would be out 
of the question. An alliance with England will soon 
be so. At present there is a natural sympathy be- 
tween her and the South. We are the two purest 
aristocracies on the face of the earth. But in ten 
years England must be freer than we are now, or 
she will be only a heap of smoking and chaotic frag- 
ments. Observe how her journals exult because 



[ ^ ] 
150,000 shopkeepers were frightened into special 
constables by being made to believe that Chartism 
meant universal breaking of plate-glass and pillage. 
The middle class of England is her most dangerous 
population. Were I an English aristocrat, it would 
be the ignorance of this class that I should fear. 
Their brains have fattened with prosperity. It is the 
unyieldingness of the stratum next above the low- 
est which ensures violence to the explosion. It is 
to the movements of the Chartists that I look for an 
augury of the future. It is the fasting operative in 
his lonely and arid desert who is possessed with the 
unconscious spirit of prophecy. It is he who has his 
visions and Sinais and tables of a new law. What 
will all the cold water which the middle class can 
throw with their little fire-engine avail against the 
outbreak of a volcano ? 

MR. CASS 

It becomes our unfortunate necessity to assume an 
appearance of sympathy with these wretched move- 
ments abroad, in order to divert attention from what 
might seem to the disordered vision of a false senti- 
mentality to demand our sympathy at home. I will 
not speak of the ties engendered by manufactories, 
for I own no stock. But, in my opinion, it is on the 
religious sentiment of the North that your cherished 
domestic institution rests most secure. 



[ 83 ] 

MR. CALHOUN 

Yes. Men will never give up Revelation, least of 
all those parts of it which natter their prejudices and 
excuse their derelictions of duty. Piety is as cheap 
as irreligion and vastly more profitable. In a more 
simple age, we might have procured a revelation ex- 
act ly suit id to our circumstances and wants, as our 
friend Mr. Foote says in his graces before meat. 
The printing-press has destroyed all hope of another 
Mahomet. Since it is too late in the day for that 
we must make the most of such as we have. The 
fanatics, it is true, bring the New Testament against 
us. But it is with revelations as with wine, the older 
is the better, if kept in a dark place, and a few cob- 
webs about it do no harm. The unfilial Ham is a 
tower of strength to us. There is no easier way of 
making people self-satisfied in the injustices they are 
guilty of, than to assure them that they are fulfilling 
the prophecies. 

MR. CASS 

A text in the Old Testament is worth more than 
all the violence which was exhibited in both houses 
of Congress. It is inexpensive also. There is a 
Society (of which I am a member) which distributes 
the Good Book gratis, and we see to it that it is 
moderately and judiciously expounded. 



C 84 3 

MR. CALHOUN 

The violence you allude to was not without its use- 
ful results. I never act without an object, or at least 
I have persuaded people that I do not, which is the 
same thing. On this occasion I had an end in view, 
and I gained it. I was violent just in proportion as 
I saw hope of concession from the other side. Mr. 
John P. Hale's acknowledgment, that he thought the 
act of the three kidnappers now in jail a wrong one, 
gained us vastly more than we could lose by any 
amount of angry declamation. 

MR. FOOTE 

I cannot help thinking of the poor widow and her 
intended thank-offering. My heart bleeds for her. 



1 



THE SACRED PARASOL 

71 



ather John de Plano Carpini, who some six 
hundred years ago travelled among the Tartars, has, 
with much that is interesting and authentic, left us 
some stories which call to mind such as Herodotus 
is accustomed to begin with an " As they say." 
Among other things, he relates that " in the land 
of Kergis the people dwell under ground, because, 
as they say, they cannot endure a horrible noise 
which the sun makes at his rising." In this country 
we have fully as great a horror of the sun as our 
Kergisian prototypes, and, though we find it incon- 
venient to live under ground, we contrive to be 
thoroughly subterranean in our modes of thought. 
As we manage everything by conventions, we get 
together and resolve that the sun has not arisen, 
and so settle the matter, as far as we are concerned, 
definitively. Meanwhile the sun of a new political 
truth got quietly above the horizon in our Declara- 
tion of Independence. Watchers upon the moun- 
tain tops had caught sight of a ray now and then 
before, but this was the first time that the heavenly 



1 86 1 

light-bringer had gained an objective existence in 
the eyes of an entire people. 

This was all very well at first, and as long as the 
only result was a genial warmth confined to proper 
persons and to fitting occasions, there was no room 
for any objection. But by and by the unprincipled 
beams began to penetrate into those dark places 
which it was the interest of certain persons to keep 
dark, and inquisitive people overlooking, it may be, 
very palpable motes in their own eyes, made discov- 
ery and proclamation of whole forests of timber in 
those of their neighbors. Fears in regard to helio- 
lites became now very common, and a parasol of 
some kind was found necessary as a protection 
against this celestial bombardment. A stout machine 
of parchment was accordingly constructed, and, 
under the respectable name of a Constitution, was 
interposed wherever there seemed to be danger from 
the hostile incursions of light. Whenever this is 
spread, a dim twilight — more perplexing than ab- 
solute darkness — reigns everywhere beneath its 
shadow. Do any of those sacred birds which, after 
the Roman fashion, are fed and lodged at the public 
expense in the Capitol, begin to raise a note of fore- 
warning, this wonderful implement is at once opened 
over their heads, and they settle into a contented 
silence and sleep, deceived by the fictitious night. 



C 87 ] 
This holy instrument is looked upon very much as 
the Ark of the Covenant by the Jews. Certain 
select officers are appointed for its protection, and 
these have the privilege of opening and shutting it 
at will. As corruption will creep into all irresponsi- 
ble bodies, so it has been rumored that our Levites 
have made several incursions into the gardens and 
poultry-yards of their neighbors under the shadow 
of their precious charge. However, the fault found 
with them is in an inverse ratio to the success of their 
predatory expeditions, and a chicken or an apple be- 
stowed in the right quarter is ordinarily sufficient to 
secure silence, if not applause. Not only is this for- 
tunate invention available for defence, but a thrust 
made with it is often found effective. The parch- 
ment of which it is constructed is moreover cov- 
ered with certain hagiographies or sacred scriptures, 
written, as it would seem, in a universal language, 
since they are capable of any interpretation, — 
but particularly of such as is least expected and 
least in accordance with the apparent meaning. It 
must be, however unwillingly, confessed that, in 
those little excursions for plunder above mentioned, 
rents have here and there been made in this our 
antiphotistic protector through which minds of a 
fanatic temperament and of unbridled desires begin 
to get glimpses of blue sky beyond. 



C 88 ] 

It is amazing what importance anything, however 
simple, gains by being elevated into a symbol. Ma- 
homet's green breeches were doubtless in themselves 
common things enough, and would perhaps have 
found an indifferent market in Brattle or Chatham 
Street. They might have hung stretched upon a 
pole at the door of one of those second-hand reposi- 
tories without ever rinding a customer or exciting 
any feeling but of wonder at the uncouthness of 
their cut. But lengthen the pole a little, and so raise 
the cast-off garment into a banner and symbol, and 
it becomes at once full of inspiration, and perhaps 
makes a Moslem General Taylor of the very tailor 
who cut and stitched it and had tossed it over 
carelessly a hundred times. So it is with the savage 
and his fetich. He hacks a log into something 
hideous, calls it a god, and it straightway becomes 
invested with supernatural qualities to him, — not 
precisely in itself, but as the symbol of something 
indefinite and unseen. In the same way this con- 
trivance of ours, though the work of our own hands, 
has acquired a superstitious potency in our eyes. The 
vitality of the state has been transferred from the 
citizens to this. Were a sacrilegious assault made 
upon it, our whole body politic would collapse at 
once. Gradually men are beginning to believe that, 
like the famous ancile at Rome, it fell down from 



C 89 ] 
heaven, and it is possible that it may have been 
brought thence by a distinguished personage who 
once made the descent. Meanwhile our Goddess 
of Liberty is never allowed to go abroad without 
the holy parasol over her head to prevent her from 
being tanned, since any darkening of complexion 
might be productive of serious inconvenience in the 
neighborhood of the Capitol. 

It is curious to notice how the relations of things 
are shifted under the shadow of this miraculous 
parchment. For example, the stealing of negroes 
from the coast of Africa for purposes of profit, 
though to the unsophisticated mind it might seem to 
have some objectionable features, is not stealing, but 
a laudable mercantile enterprise. On the other hand, 
to carry negroes away from the District of Columbia 
in order to set them free is a crime which goes some- 
where beyond sacrilege into the region of we know 
not what atrocity. It is true that popular prejudice 
has procured the passage of a law declaring the 
former exploit piracy, but this only goes to show 
the ignorance of the vulgar, and the wide difference 
between sacred and profane views of the same sub- 
ject. Indeed, what would be the use of having any 
sacred and inspired ideas at all if they were not 
preposterously the reverse of those commonly enter- 
tained? Sitting under the shelter of the Consti- 



C so 1 

tution, successive presidents have pardoned every 
single person convicted of bringing slaves from the 
coast of Africa, while, by a proper interpretation of 
the sacred writings, those suspected of the other 
offence are obliged to give bail to such an amount 
as prevents all escape. 

All Europe at this moment exhibits the disastrous 
consequences arising from the want of some such 
safeguard as that we have been describing. Light 
has broken in at several points, and a series of ex- 
plosions has been the consequence. It is said that 
the Europeans are only following in our own track. 
If this be so, it merely adds another illustration of 
the fact that a good example is worse than thrown 
away upon the ignorant and degraded, who pervert 
it by a base application. While we are steadily ad- 
vancing, they have gone backward. While we, the 
legitimate successors of the chosen people, are piously 
and scripturally extending the institution of Abra- 
ham, Isaac, and Jacob over regions hitherto unblessed 
with this highest refinement of civilization, France, 
with a malicious exultation, is endeavoring to reduce 
her happy colonies to her own degraded level. The 
truth is that adequate ideas of freedom can never 
coexist with any but the Anglo-Saxon race. We are 
the last remnant of that wonderful people. Let us 
endeavor to act worthily of our lofty destiny. Cuba 



[91 ] 
can yet be rescued from the machinations of foreign 
despots. 

Above all things we should bear in mind, and be 
heedful to impress it upon the generation that is to 
follow us, that there is nothing so dangerous as the 
light of what is called the sun of righteousness. Not 
only are those who are exposed to its maleficent 
rays visited by sun-strokes which frequently destroy 
the equilibrium of the brain for life, but a constant 
shower of meteoric stones comes down from it which 
greatly endangers the lives and property of nations 
or individuals who reside in houses of glass. Let us 
learn to prize adequately the constitutional protec- 
tor which shelters us, and devote our united efforts 
to keeping it in repair. Let it not be for a moment 
supposed that the North is not interested equally 
with the South in this matter. If the area of our 
common country is extended seemingly for their 
sole benefit, do we not have the privilege of paying 
for it ? If we do not ourselves enjoy the Patriarchal 
Institution, are we not invited by our Southern 
brethren to partake those healthy exercises of the 
chase which are incident to it, and which tend to 
keep in activity the more vigorous qualities of body 
and mind? And if we cannot ourselves have the 
satisfaction of punishing Drayton and his nefa- 
rious accomplices, is it not at least gratifying to 



[ 9 2 3 
think that it is in our jail that they are rotting, that 
it is our irons which are eating into their atheistical 
and parricidal flesh, and that if the over-leniency of 
the law did not screen them from that extreme pen- 
alty which they deserve, we should pay for at least 
three quarters of the Constitutional halter which 
swung them out of a country to whose principles 
they are a disgrace ? 



THE NOMINATIONS FOR THE 
PRESIDENCY 



T, 



he position of the thinking portion of the Whig 
Party reminds one of the old Scottish ballad begin- 
ning 

" Our gude man cam hame at een 

And hame cam he, 
And there he saw a saddle horse 

Where nae horse suld he. 
' how cam this horse here ? 

How can this be ? 
How cam this horse here 

Without the leave o' me ? ' 
' A horse ! ' quoth she ; 
' Ay, a horse,' quoth he ; 
' Ye auld blind dotard carl, 

Blinder mat ye be, 
'T is naething but a bonny milch cow 

My Minnie sent to me.' " 

The story goes on in the same way. The Gudeman 
sees many other suspicious circumstances, which are 
explained in an equally satisfactory manner by his 
Gudewif e, till he is at last fain to believe that a tru- 
culent gentleman in a beard is only a milkmaid. So 



C 94 ] 
the working part of The Whig Organization comes 
home at evening, takes up its newspaper, and finds 
that its convention has nominated General Taylor. 

"How is this?" it exclaims, "a military chief- 
tain?" 

"Ah yes, true," replies gudewife Convention, "but 
then opposed to the Mexican War, and, indeed, to all 
wars, and most anxious to beat into ploughshares the 
several swords which have been presented to him." 

"But is he Whig?" 

" We hope that our constituents are willing to 
repose some confidence in their convention, or, at 
least, that they are not so lost to all piety as to refuse 
to trust in Providence." 

" But he is a slaveholder." 

" Perhaps so, but Mr. Jones told the Honorable 
Mr. Smith that he overheard Colonel Brown say to 
Judge Green that he had it on good authority that 
General Taylor was opposed not only to the exten- 
sion of slavery but to the Institution itself." 

" Is it true that in the Florida war he recom- 
mended bloodh ? " 

" Gentlemen, excuse us for interrupting you, but 
he is another Cincinnatus and a second Washington. 
We have, as you see, selected for your candidate a 
peace man, a genuine Whig, and an opponent of 
slavery. What can you ask more ? " 



C 95 ] 

" To be sure," answer the mass of the party, and 
cast their votes accordingly. If any one murmur, 
his opposition is at once stigmatized as factious. 

General Taylor must certainly have been born 
with a silver spoon in his mouth. That he is pos- 
sessed of every good quality is at once quietly taken 
for granted. His partisans work as strange miracles 
about him as Mephistopheles did with his gimlet in 
Auerbach's cellar. The guests had but to call for 
white wine or red, and a few twirls of the gimlet 
into the wainscot would set the desired liquor abroach. 
In the same way one needs only to inquire for any 
desirable quality of intellect or character and a turn 
or two of the political augurs indicates at once its 
hitherto unsuspected existence in General Taylor. 
One can hardly conceive of so many and so great 
virtues combined except in an epitaph or an obituary. 
It may safely be conceded that so perfect a character 
could never have been formed except under the fos- 
tering influence of slavery. In comparison with the 
General, Cerberus hides his diminished heads and 
acknowledges himself outdone in a walk which has 
hitherto been considered peculiarly his own. Taylor 
must be a great many more than three gentlemen at 
once. 

But among all the virtues that illustrate this hero, 
it is curious that the Whigs should maintain so pro- 



Z96 1 

found a silence in regard to that particular one which 
chiefly led to his being selected as a candidate. It 
is possible that they may be fearful of exciting a 
suspicion that so much goodness centred in a single 
individual is an impossibility. We have called it the 
one virtue, but perhaps we should rather have spoken 
of the hundred and ten virtues, that being precisely 
the number of " farm-servants " owned by the mod- 
ern Cincinnatus. It was at the thought of this that 
the Whig Diogeneses, seeking for a man, laid aside 
their lanterns at once. Here at last Christian heroism 
was found united with practical availability. 

Another strong argument in Taylor's favor is 
found in the candidate nominated by the opposite 
party. We are not at all surprised that the opinion 
should be pretty general that anybody is better than 
Cass. But we must confess that in the particular 
merit which constitutes availability, we think the 
Michigan General even more deserving than the 
Kentucky one. If the advocates of Taylor are able 
to bring one hundred and ten reasons for his nomi- 
nation, it must be recollected that it was merely the 
accident of his birth which enabled them to do so. 
General Cass had the misfortune to be brought into 
the world in a non-slaveholding state, but he has 
struggled nobly to overcome the disadvantages of his 
birthplace and education. He has been as good as 



[97 ] 
circumstances would allow. Disabled from holding 
slaves, he has shown that he is quite willing to be one 
himself. That man must be sound on the question of 
slavery who cringes at once to the ferocious rapacity 
of ignorance in the North and West, and to the 
sleeker and more catlike predatory instincts of self- 
ishness at the South. 

In nominating their candidates, both parties have 
done their worst. Both have silently confessed that 
the problem of a democratic government is incapable 
of an honest solution as far as they are concerned. 
Each has endeavored to bid highest for the favor of 
the brutal and base fraction of the people. The 
Democrats have established a code of national morals 
which leaves the not out of the eighth commandment, 
and have selected as the fitting exponent of their 
creed a man who thinks it right to steal your neigh- 
bor's land, if he is weaker, and your neighbor also, 
if he is darker, than yourself. The Whigs, in weigh- 
ing the merits of their several candidates, threw into 
the scale a bloody sword, and lest that should not be 
enough, added the heavier iniquity of a bloody slave- 
whip. 

It remains to be seen whether the honester men of 
both parties are willing again to be quiet under their 
quadrennial sale to the South. The word no is the 
shibboleth of politicians. There is some malforma- 



C98 ] 

tion or deficiency in their vocal organs which either 
prevents their uttering it at all, or gives it so thick a 
pronunciation as to be unintelligible. A mouth filled 
with the national pudding, or watering in the expec- 
tation of it, is wholly incompetent to this perplexing 
monosyllable. One might imagine that America had 
been colonized by a tribe of those nondescript African 
animals, the Aye Ayers. As Pius Ninth has not yet 
lost his popularity in this country by issuing a bull 
against slavery, our youth, who are always ready to 
hurrah for anything, might be practised in the for- 
mation of the refractory negative by being encour- 
aged to shout Viva Pio Nono. 

If present indications are to be relied upon, no 
very general defection from the ranks of either party 
will result from the nominations. Politicians, who 
have been so long accustomed to weigh the expedi- 
ency of any measure by its chance of success, are 
unable to perceive that there is a kind of victory in 
simple resistance. It is a great deal to conquer only 
the habit of slavish obedience to party. The great 
obstacle is the reluctance of politicians to assume 
moral rather than political ground. We think that 
the Whig Party threw away its last chance in basing 
its opposition to Texas on the Constitution, instead 
of on the plain right and wrong of the question. 
Texas was the angulus iste, the " adjinin' heater- 



C 99 ] 
piece," which the North and South were equally de- 
sirous of fencing in. But the Whigs were afraid to 
make slavery the issue, and their cry of unconstitur 

tional was so much wasted breath. We hope that the 
lesson has not beeu thrown away upon them, and 
that they will oppose Taylor because he is a slave- 
holder and not because he is not a Whig. 

Whether dissatisfaction with the doings of the two 
National Conventions will result in any general and 
united action is more than doubtful ; yet we cannot 
but hope that the wedges have entered which shall 
split both the great party organizations, from neither 
of which can Abolitionists expect any sympathy or 
aid. We cannot think of any candidate on whom the 
two dissentient fragments could consent to unite. 
Without union they are comparatively powerless. If 
we may judge by the past, the majority of the seced- 
ers from both sides will make use of the hot water 
into which they have respectively gotten themselves, 
to boil those conscientious peas which would other- 
wise gall their feet in the pilgrimage forward to the 
promised land of Office, or back to the flesh-pots of 
Party, though indissolubly connected with the mak- 
ing of bricks without straw. 



SYMPATHY WITH IRELAND 

J_f there be anything remarkable in human sym- 
pathy (and generally we cannot say that we see any- 
thing very remarkable in it), it is the distance at 
which it loves to exert itself. It becomes more in- 
tense in proportion as its object is farther off. 
Thousands of persons let their own souls get shock- 
ingly out at the elbows, while they are busy sending 
spiritual tailors to cut and make garments of right- 
eousness for the inhabitants of countries where it 
is the fashion to wear nothing but the original 
skin. 

The last spasms of sympathy with which the 
public mind has been agitated have been somewhat 
inconsistent, one with another. We are asked to 
sympathize with the Yucatecos, against whom the 
native race has risen in insurrection, and with the 
Irish, who are preparing for a similar proceeding 
against their conquerors. The aboriginal tribes who 
inhabited the southern portion of this continent 
had reached a state of culture compared to which 
any point in the history of Ireland before its conquest 



C 101 ] 
is absolute barbarism. Their monuments compare 
not unfavorably with those of ancient Egypt, which, 
if not the mother of religion, art, and learning, was 

Certainly the channel through which they flowed 
from East to West. It is true that the Central 
Americans sacrificed human victims, but so did the 
Romans; and the Irish, even yet, offer up a landlord 
now and then. We ourselves have three men now 
in jail at Washington waiting to be immolated on 
the altar of our National Moloch. 

But we did not mean to draw any parallel be- 
tween the Central Americans and the Irish. We 
merely intended to say that, as far as could be 
judged by the past, they were the more capable of 
the two of an independent existence. We believe in 
the capacity of every race for self-government, but 
we are now endeavoring to look at the matter from 
that point of view which men commonly take. The 
question, as we shall presently show, has several 
analogies which are interesting to Abolitionists. We 
wish to compare the claims of the Irish with certain 
other claims which concern us more nearly. 

The miserable condition of Ireland is first of all 
invariably attributed to the fact of her being a con- 
quered country. But this will not serve, for England 
was also conquered, and by the very same race. 
However, the question for us is, not what has made 



Z 102 3 

Ireland what she is, nor whether she would gain by 
a separation from England, but whether we can 
consistently sympathize with her present efforts at 
regeneration. 

Can we, who have entered into a compact to sup- 
press any attempt at insurrection on the part of an 
enslaved race, beside whose sufferings the condition 
of the Irish seems heaven itself, — can we throw the 
first stone at England ? If Nat Turner was wrong, 
can John Mitchel be right ? We Americans are 
unfortunately situated. It will not do for us to fol- 
low the natural impulse of our hearts. We must 
look carefully round us before we undertake to en- 
courage attempts at liberty. While we sympathize 
with treason abroad, must we not logically encour- 
age it at home ? We are so thoroughly compromised 
about, that we are suspicious of a " miching mallecho 
which means mischief " in all kinds of humanity. 

There are many things in Mr. Mitchel's course 
which no sensible man could approve of, many which 
would shock a humane one. However ardent and 
sincere may have been his love of country, it is plain 
that his vision was bounded by the walls of the 
" United Irishman" office. The French Revolution 
seems to have turned his brain. He became per- 
suaded that a government might be as easily over- 
thrown by a riot in a provincial town, as by the 



C 1Q 3 ] 
rebellion of a metropolis whose ideas to a greater or 
less degree shaped those of an entire country. His 
tirades against " the Saxon " were not only childish, 
but bore exclusive evidence of a mind not at all 
alive to the hopes and demands of the age. A pro- 
fessed reformer who endeavors to reexcite the an- 
tipathies of race must be so far either a fool or 
a hypocrite. This is the game of the tyrant, not 
of the patriot. It has been by means of these an- 
tipathies — the growth of barbarous and bloody 
times — that the greatest national crimes have been 
perpetrated, and the foulest national oppressions sus- 
tained. 

Neither can we sympathize with Mr. Mitchel in 
his appeal to arms. Setting aside the question of its 
morality, it was unwise. Matters are wonderfully 
simplified for a government when the demand for 
the redress of grievance is removed from the region 
of ideas to that of physical force. The oppressor 
can argue best with the cannon and the bayonet. 
The pike cannot reach him, though it be, as Mr. 
Mitchel advised, on the end of a good ashen pole 
ten feet long. But invincible thought overleaps the 
wall of the fortress, and reaches him through the 
serried ranks of his guards. A thousand chances 
may bring about the defeat of the rebel, which would 
have been the allies of the peaceful reformer. It is 



C 104 ] 
hard fighting with ideas. The reformer is in league 
with them, but the rebel sets them in array against 
himself. He has to contend against the ideas of 
social order, of government, and many more whose 
hold upon men's minds, naturally strong, has been 
tightened by invariable prescription. The habit of 
oppression can only be gradually conquered. It 
strengthens itself against a sudden and violent at- 
tack. The rebel, too, has set in motion forces which 
he cannot guide or control. The degraded ignorance 
of the oppressed, which affords an unanswerable 
argument against the tyrant, may be hurried into 
crimes which will be laid to the charge of freedom. 
The English hated and feared O'Connell, but they 
laughed at Mitchel. 

We were not among those who were shocked at 
the kind of weapons recommended by Mr. Mitchel 
and his friends. If the necessity of violence be once 
granted, we do not see much to choose on the score 
of morality between bayonets and brickbats, prussic 
acid and powder. The object being to knock your 
enemy on the head, we cannot perceive any moral 
distinction between the staff of a pike and the butt 
of a musket. We believe God to be fully as well 
pleased with broken bottles as with grapeshot. The 
more savage war can be made to appear, the better. 
It is only sentimentalism which sees any difference 



C 105 ] 
between the medal voted by Congress and hung in 
the general's parlor and the dried scalps rattling on 
the end of a pole at the door of the -wigwam. 

We cannot understand how those who admit the 
necessity of any kind of government based upon 
physical force can object to the trial and sentence of 
Mr. Mitchel. The question of his being abstractly 
right or wrong we have nothing to do with now. 
As far as the English government was concerned, 
he was unquestionably guilty. He asked for force, 
and he got it. He was bold enough to risk the 
hazard of the game, and the throw has been against 
him. He should have remembered that the govern- 
ment played with loaded dice. 

We are willing to forgive everything to the exas- 
peration which the condition of his unhappy coun- 
try must have produced in a mind constitutionally 
inflammable. We believe him to have been sincere 
and devoted, though mistaken, and as such he de- 
serves our deepest commiseration. We may take 
this position consistently as individuals, but as Amer- 
icans we must be dumb. What has Mr. Mitchel done 
that we should give to him the sympathy which we 
deny to Sayres, Drayton, and English? The act 
which led to their imprisonment was a more disin- 
terested one than any for which he can claim credit. 
If they had succeeded, they could not possibly have 



c 106 2 

expected any reward but the approval of their own 
consciences. With Mr. Mitchel the case was differ- 
ent. It was something to be the spokesman of a dis- 
affected people ; a successful rebellion would have 
made him their chief. 

If there be any reason for our encouraging rebel- 
lion in Ireland, we ought a fortiori to promote in- 
surrection among our slaves. Still more strongly 
would logical necessity compel us to foment it 
among the inhabitants of the provinces we have just 
conquered from Mexico. The English government 
is fully as humane, as wise, and as just as our own. 
The social system of one half of our own country is 
worse than that of England. Our government de- 
votes itself to the extension and perpetuation of this, 
system, while that of England is taking steps towards 
reform. Those among us who bear a constant and 
outspoken testimony against American sins may be 
allowed to speak of English ones. One nation may 
oppress a white race, and the other a black one, but 
tyranny is of one complexion all the world over. 

Some enthusiastic spirits are desirous that our 
government should interfere ; others that an expedi- 
tion should be fitted out for the rescue of Mitchel. 
There is not the slightest chance that government 
will do the one or allow the other. Slavery is too 
cunning to put its ugly head into the mouth of the 



C 1Q 7 3 

British lion. If any private persons are anxious to 
get up an expedition for the rescue of imprisoned 
martyrs for the cause of freedom, they can direct it 
towards the jail at Washington with more propriety 
and consistency than against the hulks at Bermuda. 



WHAT WILL MR. WEBSTER DO? 

J_t is astonishing to see how fond men are of com- 
pany. We demand a select society even upon the 
fence, and will not jump on this side or that till we 
have made as accurate a prospective census as pos- 
sible. There are few who are willing to do either 
a good or bad deed alone. Right and wrong are 
settled by majorities, as if the responsibility could 
be lessened by increasing the denominator. God 
and Satan are looked upon as candidates, and the 
one or the other shall have a chance for our vote in 
proportion as he seems likely to get the votes of 
other people. We weigh availabilities, and measure 
accurately the amount of noise at the ratification 
meetings. The achievement we find most difficult 
is simply to be ourselves. Yet nature is forever 
digging pitfalls of one kind or another to entrap us 
into individuality. Separate as planets she made us, 
revolving each in his own orbit, mutually sustained 
and exchanging gifts of light and warmth, the inter- 
dependent isolation of each being necessary to the 
harmony of all. But we contrive to break through 



C 10 ^ ] 

the natural laws of spiritual gravitation, rushing 
headlong together to make one shapeless planet out 
of the wrecks of a system. 

When the choice between the strait way and the 
broad is offered us, we glance out of the corner of 
our eye to see how Mr. A. or Mr. B. is likely to go, 
having a fancy that the footsteps of either of those 
eminent men can settle the point at which the roads 
shall respectively come out. But, though we may 
thus be said to be carried by the legs of Messrs. A. 
and B. rather than by our own, we must remember 
that there is a third pair which will smart equally 
with the other two at the end of the journey. We 
may be borne, if we will, upon another man's shoul- 
der, but we carry our responsibility all the while 
upon our own. 

We understand all this theoretically very well, 
but we never practically act upon it. Each of us 
is furnished with an inward consciousness which dis- 
tinguishes right from wrong as infallibly as the 
electric spark selects the iron and shuns the glass. 
But we have substituted for right and wrong the 
expedient and inexpedient, toward both of which 
our mentor is indifferent. Between these we cannot 
decide absolutely, but only circumstantially, being 
thrown out of ourselves for a choice. We put judg- 
ment (as we name the result of worldly experience) 



L no ] 
in the place of conscience. Yet even the judgment 
we make use of is of a very limited kind. It is 
based wholly upon the experience of our own Little 
Pedlington. If our induction were comprehensive 
enough, we should see that we might as well at- 
tempt to anchor the globe where it is, as to oppose 
our temporary and fugitive expedients to the ten- 
dencies of the human mind. It is like trying to 
bind God with green withes. 

After all, even in estimating expediencies we are 
loth to trust ourselves. We desire rather the judg- 
ment of this or that notable person, and dare not 
so much as write Honesty is the best policy, or any 
other prudent morality, till he has set us a copy at 
the top of the page. In Massachusetts just now 
there are we know not how many people waiting 
for Mr. Webster's action on the recent nomination 
for the presidency, and no doubt there is hardly 
a village in the country which has not its little co- 
terie of self-dispossessed politicians expecting in 
like manner the moment when the decision of some 
person, whose stomach does the thinking for theirs, 
shall allow them to take sides. 

"What will Mr. Webster do?" asks Smith. 
" Greatest mind of the age ! " says Brown. " Of 
any age," adds Jones triumphantly. Meanwhile the 
greatest mind of any age is sulking at Marskfield. 



I 111 : 

It has had its rattle taken away from it. It has 
been told that nominations were not good for it. 
It has not been allowed to climb up the back of the 
presidential chair. We have a fancy that a truly 
great mind can move the world as well from a 
three-leffsred stool in a garret as from the easiest 
cushion hi the White House. Where the great 
mind is, there is the president's house, whether at 
Wood's Hole or Washington. 

We would not be understood as detracting in the 
least from Mr. Webster's reputation as a man of 
great power. He has hitherto given evidence of a 
great force, it seems to us, rather than of a great 
intellect. But it is a force working without results. 
It is like a steam-engine which is connected by no 
band with the machinery which it ought to turn. 
A great intellect leaves behind it something more 
than a great reputation. The earth is in some way 
the better for its having taken flesh upon itself. 
We cannot find that Mr. Webster has communicated 
an impulse to any of the great ideas which it is the 
destiny of the nineteenth century to incarnate in 
action. His energies have been absorbed by Tariff 
and Constitution and Party — dry bones into which 
the touch of no prophet could send life. Party 
could hardly take up the whole of a great mind so 
that nothing would be left over for humanity. It 



C 112 3 

is not true that even the greatest intellects must 
be subservient to the circumstances by which they 
find themselves surrounded. It is the characteristic 
of such that they create their own circumstances. 
Where they are is always the centre. If they must, 
as is commonly said, take the world as they find it, 
they must not leave it so. Their destiny is a bene- 
ficent and creative one. Thus far Mr. Webster has 
created nothing but a fame. 

What will Mr. Webster do ? This is of more im- 
portance to him than to the great principle which is 
beginning to winnow the old parties. This, having 
God on its side, can do very well without Mr. Web- 
ster, — but can he do as well without it ? The truth 
of that principle will not be affected by his taking 
one side or the other. But occasio ceteris, and the 
great man is always the man of the occasion. He 
mounts and guides that mad steed whose neck is 
clothed with thunder, and whose fierce Ha ! ha ! 
at the sound of the trumpets appals weaker spirits. 
Two or three years ago we spoke of one occasion 
which Mr. Webster allowed to slip away from him. 
That was the annexation of Texas. Another is 
offered him now. We do not believe that party ever 
got what was meant for mankind. Mr. Webster has 
now once more an opportunity of showing which he 
was meant for. If party be large enough to hold 



C 113 1 
hiin, then mankind can afford to let him go. Never- 
theless it is sad to imagine him still grinding for 
the Philistines. We cannot help thinking that his 
first appearance as Samson grasping the pillars of 
the idol-temple, would draw a fuller house than Mr. 
Van Buren in the same character. 

Just at this moment, however, Mr. Webster is 
more like Achilles than Samson. His Briseis has 
been taken away from him, and he sits angrily in- 
active in his tent at Marshfield. There is this point 
of unlikeness, that if the Whigs can take their Troy 
at all, they can do it without him. Mr. Webster's 
unwilling cooperation would bring them but little 
strength. If the country is to be carried for General 
Taylor, the men who can hurrah are of more conse- 
quence than the men who can reason. People are 
to open their mouths and shut their eyes and they 
will get something which will make them very wise 
indeed — probably a mouthful of red pepper. On 
the other hand, should Mr. Webster go over to the 
seceders, his loss would be a very serious one. Let 
that great force of his but once get a chance to 
work freely, let it be inspired by contact with great 
principles, and it would become irresistible. The 
old quidquid delirant reges will not apply here. 
The more the leaders fall out, the more chance is 
there that the people will get their own again. 



C X1 * ] 

Let us concede to Mr. Webster's worshippers that 
he has heretofore given proof enough of a great 
intellect, and let us demand of him now that he 
make use of, perhaps, his last chance to become a 
great Man, Of what profit are the hands of a giant 
in the picking up of pins? Let him leave banks 
and tariffs to more slender fingers. If ever a man 
was intended for a shepherd of the people, Dan- 
iel Webster is. The people are fast awakening to 
great principles ; what they want is a great man to 
concentrate and intensify their diffuse enthusiasm. 
And it is not every sort of greatness that will serve 
for the occasion. Webster, if he would only let him- 
self go, has every qualification for a popular leader. 
The use of such a man would be that of a con- 
ductor to gather, from every part of the cloud of 
popular indignation, the scattered electricity which 
would waste itself in heat-lightnings, and grasping 
it into one huge thunderbolt let it fall like the mes- 
senger of an angry god among the triflers in the 
Capitol. 

Let Mr. Webster give over at last the futile task 
of sowing the barren sea-shore of the Present, and 
devote himself to the Future, the only legitimate 
seedfield of great minds. Slimmer and glibber men 
will slip through the labyrinth of politics more 
easily than he. He will always be outstripped and 



C »5 ] 
outwitted. Politics are in their nature transitory. 
He who writes his name on them, be the letters 
never so large, writes it on sand. The next wind of 
shifting opinion puffs it out forever. It is never too 
late to do a wise or great action. We do not yet 
wholly despair of hearing the voice of our Daniel 
reading the Mene, Mene, written on the wall of our 
political fabric. 



THE NEWS FROM PARIS 



M, 



.any persons seem to consider the recent mourn- 
ful events in Paris as decisive proof that the French 
people are incapable of self-government. Indeed, the 
news of the French Revolution of February was re- 
ceived with ill-disguised coldness even in the United 
States. The age of chivalry in passing away made 
room for the gradual development of the age of 
respectability, whose most exact type was Louis 
Philippe. The kingship of the Napoleon of Peace 
was more thoroughly eclipsed by the pea-jacket in 
which he effected his flight than by his dethrone- 
ment. Little sympathy was felt for exiled majesty 
with only a five-franc piece in his pocket. But, 
though the Broker King was laughed at, a revolution 
which lowered the price of stocks was not regarded 
with any favor. If the money market were convulsed 
it mattered little whether the stock of humanity rise 
or fall, those being contingencies by which very few 
holders would be affected. 

The last news from Paris was accordingly not un- 
gratifying to respectability. As a general rule, pro- 



C 117 ] 

phets of evil are rather apt to be pleased with the suc- 
cess of their vaticinations. They are quite willing that 
their sagacity should be complimented at the expense 
of their benevolence. What else could be expected, 
we are triumphantly asked in the present instance, 
when the very foundations of society were over- 
turned ? Alas, the mistake lies in considering dollars 
and not man as the foundation ! It is a mistake 
which must be driven out of men's minds even at the 
expense of many more such horrible events as this 
at Paris. Where the noxious gases of ignorance and 
starvation have been fermenting for ages in darkness, 
the introduction of the first exploring candle may 
produce an explosion. 

The numbers of the late Parisian insurgents are 
estimated at fifty thousand. It is perfectly idle to say 
that plunder and violence were their objects. They 
are the very same men who wrote Mort mix voleurs 
upon the walls of the Tuileries during the revolution 
of February. Disappointment that certain theories 
of government had not been soon enough realized in 
practice could never have driven them to an armed 
insurrection. Such men are not theorists. The great 
questions of social reform are not with them matters 
of speculation in easy chairs, but the stern lessons 
set every day by Poverty and Famine. Want, and not 
wish, is at the bottom of armed insurrections. Here 



C "8 1 
are the two horns of the dilemma : either these men 
had a definite object of radical change in the social 
system, or else there were fifty thousand men in Paris 
so degraded that the mere love of bloodshed or hope 
of plunder could stir them to revolt. In either case 
society was to blame. The social order which starved 
fifty thousand men cannot be of God ; that which 
makes brutes of them must be of the Devil. 

We are willing to confess that we have no kind 
of f ellow-f eeling with the satisfaction which we have 
heard and seen expressed that the insurgents were 
put down. It would have been infinitely more joyous 
news to us to have heard that they had been raised 
up. The great problem of the over-supply of labor 
is not to be settled by a decimation of the laboring 
class, whether by gunpowder or starvation. Society 
in a healthy condition would feel the loss of every 
pair of willing and useful hands thrust violently out 
of it. That these Parisian ouvriers were driven to 
rebellion by desperation is palpable. That they had 
ideas in their heads is plain from their conduct im- 
mediately after the revolution. They were suffering 
then. It was they who had achieved the victory over 
the old order of things. In the then anarchic state 
of the capital, rapine, had that been their object, was 
within easy reach. But the revolution of February 
was not the chaotic movement of men to whom any 



C »9] 
change was preferable to the wretched present. Not 
so much subversion, as subversion for the sake of or- 
ganization, was what they aimed at. The giant Labor 
did not merely turn over from one side to the other 
for an easier position. Rather he rose up — 

" Like blind Orion hungry for the morn." 

It was light which the people demanded. Social order 
was precisely the thing they wished for in place 
of social chaos. Government was what they asked. 
They had learned by bitter experience that it was on 
the body of old King Log, Laissez-Faire, that King 
Stork perched to devour them. Let alone is good 
policy after you have once got your perfect system 
established to let alone. There is not in all history 
an instance of such heroic self-denial as that which 
was displayed by what it is the fashion to call the 
mob of Paris during the few days immediately fol- 
lowing the flight of the Orleans dynasty. What was 
the shield which the noble Lamartine held up be- 
tween the provisional government and the people ? 
Simply the idea of the Republic ! And this idea was 
respected by starving men with arms in their hands. 
No, a mob is a body of men in whom the imme- 
diate passion or interest of the moment triumphs over 
reason. If the middle class of France do not appre- 
ciate the situation in which they are placed, if they 



C 12 ° 3 

do not grasp the occasion which is offered them, if 
they do not fulfil the destiny to which they are called, 
it is they who will be the mob. The Revolution of 
1830 was the work of the middle class. Louis Phi- 
lippe ceased to represent the idea of that revolu- 
tion, and the throne crumbled away from under him. 
The Revolution of 1848 had been achieved by the 
working class. The Bourgeoisie stand in the same 
relation toward this which Louis Philippe occupied 
toward the last. Let them not show themselves to 
be Bourbons in their blindness to the present and 
their imperviousness to the experience of the past. 

The rest of Europe seems destined to be convulsed 
by a struggle of races. The wounds of nationality 
are those which there smart the most keenly. In 
France the contest is between classes. The present 
system of society seems like a raft put hastily to- 
gether out of fragments of the wreck of feudalism. 
It is so crazy that unless every one stand still there is 
danger of all going overboard. It is so ill provisioned 
that a part of the crew must be thrown into the sea 
or serve as food for the rest. In the war of classes 
the concession must always be on the part of the 
least desperate. But unhappily concession is not and 
never will be cure. It is not the particular fester of 
each city, country, or generation that must be got rid 
of. The disease itself which produces them must be 



[ 121 ] 
conquered, and even this is of comparatively little 
avail while the cause of the disease remains ungrap- 
pled with. Patent disinfecters will answer a tempo- 
rary purpose, but as long as the miasma factories are 
left in active operation you will have the pestilence. 
The experiment of driving in the disease, which has 
just been tried in Paris, and which seems to give so 
much satisfaction to the regular faculty of state doc- 
tors, is the most useless and most dangerous of all. 

We do not profess to point out a remedy. But 
we have a right to demand that governments and 
governing classes everywhere should diligently and 
honestly seek for one, and should examine the plans 
and propositions of those who have made social 
science the study of their lives instead of sneering at 
them. Those who desire the application of a uni- 
versal remedy throw no obstacle in the way of indi- 
vidual and immediate philanthropy. They sympathize 
with all those who in any way, however limited, are 
laboring 

" to make less 
The sum of human wretchedness," 

but their chief hope is to combine fragmentary be- 
nevolence into a system which shall render private 
philanthropy useless by removing its objects. 

No one can deplore more sincerely than we do an 
armed appeal for justice. But still more deeply do 



C 122 3 

we lament the cause of it. Starvation and slaughter 
are both bad, but while you tolerate the one you are 
creating the necessity for the other. Are the atroci- 
ties of men driven to insurrection so horrible as the 
fact that society has allowed them to become capable 
of their commission ? If violence be not the way of 
obtaining social rights, neither is it capable of main- 
taining social wrongs) A permanent truce was never 
^written in blood. It is in those crimson characters 
that men inscribe the hope of vengeance and the 
memory of wrong. 



THE BUFFALO CONVENTION 



T 



he most important event in recent American 
politics is undoubtedly the Convention at Buffalo, 
which will have taken place when this number of 
the Standard reaches its readers. Although the 
wires of the magnetic telegraph will have already 
superseded speculation with certainty, yet a few re- 
marks on the probable effect of the Buffalo nomina- 
tion on the elections may not be out of place. 

It will be well to settle distinctly in our minds 
precisely what the nature of the " Free Soil " move- 
ment is, and to keep it constantly in view in our 
remarks upon it. A party should be tried, not by 
our own wishes of what it might be, or our own 
convictions of what it ought to be, but by its own 
professions and the objects which it proposes to 
itself. It should always be remembered that the 
" Free Soil " party is not an Abolition party in any 
sense of the word. Yet perhaps it will be wiser for 
us to be thankful for what they are than to re- 
proach them with what they are not, and do not 
claim to be. Let us rejoice that they are a party 



C 12 4 ] 
who have first surmised, and at last satisfied them- 
selves of the existence and necessity of Conscience. 
Let us not counsel drowning Freedom to push indig- 
nantly away the narrow plank they would throw to her 
because they have not sent a fleet of seventy-fours. 

The view that we are inclined to take of the mat- 
ter is this : that, however inadequate the Wilmot 
Proviso may be, it is only the first forward step 
into which the politicians of the free States have 
been forced by the onward pressure of the people 
behind them. It is the first step toward an ulterior 
object, and not the object itself. It will be as im- 
possible for the leaders of the Free Soil movement 
to stand still after they have taken this one step, as 
it was for them to stop where they already were. 
The fresh instincts of the popular heart clearly tend 
to a point beyond and above them. Unless the new 
party is content to move onward, the single object 
now proposed being obtained, affairs will resolve 
themselves into precisely their old condition before 
the movement began. The momentarily distracted 
attention of the country will at once revert to the 
old issue, and the simple question will again become 
one between Slavery and Freedom. The struggle 
between these two must be one of life and death. 

As Abolitionists we are not immediately con- 
cerned in a question of the acquisition of new terri- 



[ 125 ] 
tory. We may differ in opinion upon that point, 
but we can only have one opinion as to whether 
Slavery shall be permitted to blast the territory 
when acquired. In respect to this, Abolitionists and 
the mere opponents of the aggressive policy of 
Slavery occupy common ground. For non-voters, 
of course, the nomination of the Buffalo Conven- 
tion has no immediate and personal interest, but we 
do not perceive how any voting Anti-Slavery man 
can hesitate as to the best course for him to pur- 
sue in the present contingency. To him, it is still 
permitted to weigh policies and expediencies. The 
single question for him is how he shall cast his vote 
so as to be most efficacious pro hac vice. 

Unquestionably the most important office which 
the new party is destined to perform is the breaking 
up of the old organizations already hopelessly cor- 
rupt. As long as Whigs and Democrats are allowed 
to follow their single vocation of throwing dust in 
the eyes of the people, it will be impossible for 
Slavery to be seen in all its hideous deformity. So 
far as the Wilmot Proviso is concerned, we may 
consider that the agitation at the North has already 
virtually settled the question. A singular and rapid 
transformation has been effected in many members 
of Congress, and a pretty large number of ci-devant 
jackals have been changed into lions for the nonce. 



C 126 ] 

The issue, then, is narrowed down to this single 
point. The " Free Soil " party can only be useful 
in destroying the old parties, and how will it be 
most effective for this end? It is clear that the 
candidate of such a party need not necessarily be 
an Abolitionist. He must simply be the person on 
whom the largest number of votes can be concen- 
trated. Mr. Van Buren, it appears to us, is clearly 
that person. He has already received the nomina- 
tion of the largest body of seceders. Men's minds 
have become accustomed to consider him as the ex- 
ponent of the movement, and he is fully as much of 
an Abolitionist as any other candidate who is likely 
to be proposed. To be sure, he has declared that 
he would veto a bill for the abolition of Slavery 
in the District of Columbia, but he occupies here 
the same ground taken by John Quincy Adams, 
and has, moreover, as we are informed on good 
authority, expressed his willingness to sign an act 
for the removal of the seat of government into a 
free State. It appears to us highly probable that Mr. 
Hale, who has never assumed an aggressive Anti- 
Slavery position, will give all his influence to the 
support of Mr. Van Buren. 

Whatever may be the objects or the policy of the 
leaders in the Free Soil rebellion, we are certain 
that the people have a sincere and definite purpose. 



C 12 7 ] 
To prepare them for the new aspect of affairs it 
has been necessary to represent the institution of 
Slavery itself in tolerably hateful colors. The peo- 
ple believe not only that they are doing something 
for the restriction, but for the total overthrow of 
Slavery. As soon as they find that their measures 
are inadequate, they will try new ones. The popular 
mind is straightforward and simple, and does not 
willingly put up with shams. 

The present position of politics, then, is encour- 
aging to Abolitionists, although the Free Soil party 
is only endeavoring to attain a narrow and transi- 
tory object. It is encouraging, because we can see 
underneath all the various developments of a party 
a genuine Anti-Slavery influence exerting itself, and 
coming: nearer and nearer to the surface. The little 
acorn of the Liberator has in seventeen years be- 
come a great tree. The public mind is becoming 
more and more impregnated with the principles of 
freedom, and will move forward as regardless of the 
new party as of the old ones. This new party will, 
in spite of itself, interpret the " ultra " Abolition- 
ists to the masses. We may well rejoice that it has 
arisen to give concentration and definite direction 
to a popular sentiment which it can neither satisfy 
nor retard. 



THE IRISH REBELLION 

J\.t this moment it is probable that an insurrec- 
tion has broken out in Ireland. What is to be 
gained by it we do not clearly see ; but the popular 
leaders seem to have adopted the principle of reform 
if they can get it, and a rebeDion at all events. 
They have resolved that the people shall metaphori- 
cally get a bellyful, and that after the Barmecide 
entertainment of the past two years a dessert of 
grape and gunpowder tea shall follow. Their coun- 
trymen ask for bread, and they give them a pike. 
They ask for education, and instruction in the in- 
fantry drill is offered them. We cannot help think- 
ing that the drills it were wise to be busiest about 
are those in which their potatoes are planted. If the 
tenures of land could be changed or the potato-rot 
cured by an insurrection, we could see some reason 
in it. We are not of those who believe that the tree 
of liberty must be watered with blood. 

We are not aware that the present Irish leaders 
have any plan except downright anarchy. That they 
have an earnest desire to remove the evils under 



[ 129 ] 

which their unhappy country is suffering we have 
no doubt ; but they offer nothing as a substitute for 
the present state of affairs. Mr. O'Connell was not 
by any means a profound statesman, but he saw the 
necessity of concentrating the popular mind upon 
some point of peaceful agitation. Whether repeal 
would have proved to be the panacea he expected is 
doubtful ; but the continual agitation of the ques- 
tion drew attention to the state of the country, and 
forced upon the English government the necessity 
of some measure of relief . 

We cannot perceive that Messrs. O'Brien, Doheny, 
and Meagher are at all wiser than the ignorant mul- 
titudes whom they are proposing to lead — nowhere. 
It is very plain that they had no comprehension of 
the causes which brought about the French Revolu- 
tion, or they would never have sent an embassy to 
Paris to ask for armed assistance. The Irish masses, 
at least, know what they want — work and food. 
That their leaders are quite unable to solve the 
problem proposed to them evidently appears by their 
putting arms into the hands of the people instead 
of tools, and cries for vengeance into their mouths 
instead of bread. That they have no constructive 
talent is proved by this : that, if their insurrection 
were successful and the independence of Ireland at- 
tained, the first thing to be done would be to tear 



C !30 ] 
down all which they have been so busy in building, 
and to get rid at all risks of the love of arms and 
hatred of the Saxon. 

An insurrection in Ireland would be a godsend to 
the British Ministry. It would distract attention 
while measures for reform in England were quietly 
buried out of the way, and would enable Lord John 
Russell to seem to be doing something. It could be 
put down with ease, and would furnish an apology 
for governing the country worse than ever, if that 
be possible. Moreover, the leaders have done all they 
could to deprive the rebellion of what sympathy it 
would gain as the last mad expedient of despair, by 
constantly holding up revenge as its motive and 
end. If all the wrongs of the past are to be answered 
for, Mr. Smith O'Brien himself might be called upon 
to atone for some misdemeanor of the petty king 
whose lineal descendant he is. No doubt it would be 
gratifying to him to offer so fine an example of 
poetical justice. 

Suppose for a moment that the English govern- 
ment should send no troops into Ireland, and should 
make no attempt to suppress the projected rising, 
what would the rebels accomplish ? It can hardly be 
imagined that Mr. O'Brien, himself a large land- 
holder, would head a movement for the extinction 
of the present titles to real estate. Nothing short of 



c >3i : 

some radical measure of this complexion will afford 
effectual relief to Ireland. The only permanent safe- 
guard against famine is to give the people a deeper 
interest in the soil they cultivate and the crops they 
raise. It is the constant sense of insecurity that has 
made the Irish the shiftless and prodigal people 
which they are represented to be by all travelers. 
Education will be of no avail unless at the same 
time something be given them on which they can 
bring it to a practical bearing. Take away English 
opposition, and the present insurrection is directed 
against — what ? We confess ourselves at a loss for 
an answer. The only insurrection which has done 
Ireland any real service was the one headed by 
Father Mathew. The true office of the Irish Wash- 
ington would be to head a rebellion against thrift- 
lessness, superstition, and dirt. The sooner the barri- 
cades are thrown up against these, the better. Ire- 
land is in want of a revolution which shall render 
troops less necessary rather than more so. 

Mr. Mitchel seems to have perceived that one 
great curse of Ireland was her land-tenures. Every 
square foot of the country is covered with its bit of 
sheepskin, and the peasant must pay for its removal 
in order to thrust his spade into the soil. But the 
armed preparation now going on does not, as far as 
we can learn, contemplate any bettering in this par- 



C 132 3 

ticular. Nor would it have, even if successful, any 
effect in lessening the other evil of absenteeism, un- 
less it should in some way contrive to make Dublin 
a more desirable place to spend money in than Lon- 
don. Irish landlords after the revolution will be 
Irish landlords still, and we presume that a distress 
for rent would be very much the same thing in the 
hands of a Celtic or Saxon constable. 

In the mean time meetings are held all over the 
United States to raise money and sympathy in aid 
of the revolt. At these assemblages the same in- 
spired talk is heard which gives dignity to similar 
gatherings in Ireland. Geography, history, political 
economy, common sense, one after the other, yield 
gracefully to the fervid demands of patriotism. An 
Irish legion from America is to make a swoop at 
London, and thus create a diversion in favor of 
their compatriots. We have no doubt they would 
create diversion to their hearts' content, should 
they undertake the expedition. Another party pro- 
poses a descent upon Canada, where, of course, they 
would be received with open arms. The humanity 
or justice of this last plan is quite beyond our com- 
prehension. 

We should like to have any American favorer of 
Irish rebellion explain to us the moral distinction 
between Ireland and South Carolina. Are not our 



[ 133 ] 
treaty with England and our duty toward her as 
imperative as our constitutional compromises with 
Slavery? Are gentlemen who subscribe their five 
hundred dollars to forward a rising in Ireland to- 
day ready to give as much to bring about a similar 
result in Georgia to-morrow? If not, what is the 
difference ? Would Mr. Greeley, who may be elected 
to a centurioncy in the future legion, buckle on his 
knapsack and shoulder his musket to put down a 
revolution in Virginia? We have not the least idea 
that he would ; and yet he would be bound to do so 
on the principle of allowing to Slavery all its consti- 
tutional guarantees. We know that there has always 
been a wide distinction between tweedle-dum and 
tweedle-dee, and it must be something very like it 
which enables a man consistently to give a ballot to 
a Kentucky landlord and a bullet to an Irish one. 
Mr. Greeley not a great while ago found grievous 
fault with the Abolitionists for being destructive. 
Abolitionists are indeed destructives as far as Slavery 
is concerned ; but it is by constructing a public 
opinion against it, one of the first fruits of which 
is the formation of the Free Soil party, over which 
Mr. Greeley rejoices. But is Mr. Greeley's Irish 
sympathy to be applied to constructive purposes? 
We have always associated the name of Horace 
Greeley with peaceful reforms. We are sorry to see 



C !S4 ] 
him taking this military turn. He has altogether too 
good a head to be knocked into a cocked hat. 

All that we ask of the friends of Ireland is that 
they should be consistent, and make no chromatic 
distinctions between white slaves and black. We do 
not ask them for subscriptions to lodge lead in the 
brains of the masters, but to help in effecting a 
lodgment for right ideas there and elsewhere. 



i^ 



FANATICISM IN THE NAVY 

VV E have seen in the newspapers a letter from an 
officer in the navy concerning Liberia, which offers 
an occasion for a few comments. The author of the 
epistle is Captain Samuel Mercer, of whom we know 
nothing except the fact (which he mentioned him- 
self) of his being "a Southern man." He seems to 
be a good enough sort of fellow and to have relished 
highly playing at international ceremonials with the 
new republic. The Liberian flag was saluted with 
twenty-one guns, and President Roberts with seven- 
teen — thirty-eight guns in all. We trust that Amer- 
ica will always be thus nobly regardless of expense 
in exhibiting her devotion to the cause of republican- 
ism all over the world. 

As far as the thirty-eight guns are concerned, we 
consider the conduct of Commodore Bolton as wholly 
unexceptionable. A salute conveys no pledges, nor 
can any disagreeable inferences be drawn from it. 
But the next day the commodore went on shore, 
accompanied by Captain Mercer and several other offi- 
cers, and dined with the President. We hope to see 



c is6 n 

this affair thoroughly sifted in Congress, and an ex- 
ample made of the man who would thus abuse his 
high station to sap the foundations of our social 
fabric. Since the day when the Apostle Philip 
mounted the chariot of the Ethopian prime minister, 
we can hardly recollect an instance of more demor- 
alizing amalgamation. Conceive of an American 
officer writing as follows : — 

"If you take a family dinner with the President 
(and his hospitable door is always open to strangers), 
a blessing is asked upon the good things before you 
set to. Take a dinner at Colonel Heck's (who by 
the way keeps one of the very nicest tables), and 
1 mine host,' with his shiny black intelligent face, 
will ask a blessing on the tempting viands placed 
before you." 

We shall expect to hear from Mr. Calhoun on 
this occasion one of those profound, masterly, con- 
vincing, and whatever else speeches which he is in 
the habit of making on the wrong side of every 
question that comes before him. With a subject 
like this, his giant intellect would be fitly tasked. 
Mr. Calhoun has favored us with statesmanlike 
views on the thrilling topic of brushing boots ; let 
him now devote his mighty powers to impressing 
the mind of the country with a proper horror of 
dining with niggers. 



i~ 



I *37 ] 

We are not without our suspicions that Commo- 
dore Bolton has been belied in this matter. We 
cannot believe that the patriotism of any officer of 
our gallant navy, however long confined to salt- 
junk, would succumb to the temptation of President 
Roberts's fresh meat or Colonel Heck's nice table. 
Our confidence in Captain Mercer's veracity is 
somewhat shaken by the following statement. He 
says : — 

" I took occasion one day to visit both houses of 
Congress, and listened with attention and interest 
to their debates on the new revenue or tariff law. 
Everything was done in the most decorous and 
orderly manner, each member seeming to under- 
stand the subject of discussion fully. The Senate 
consists of six members and the presiding officer, 
and the House of eight members and the speaker." 

Now it is a fact familiar to every American that 
the African race is not only totally unfit for eman- 
cipation at this present moment, but incapable of 
self-government at any time. Reason and revela- 
tion combine to enforce this great truth. It is uni- 
versally acknowledged that a retributive Providence 
made a kind of sandwich of Ham and his descend- 
ants to be devoured by the more fortunate offspring 
of Shem and Japhet. If our national vessels are not 
furnished with Bibles, it is time they were so. Our 



C 138 ] 
officers should understand that it is a tenet of the 
Christian religion that the African race is inher- 
ently incapacitated for taking care of itself. It was 
Ham's indecorum which furnished General Taylor 
and Mr. Calhoun with farm - servants. The only 
thing which has never been quite plain to us is this 
— that as the curse fell upon Mr. and not Mrs. 
Ham, and as in such cases partus sequitur ventrem, 
we do not see very clearly — but it is dangerous to 
follow these abstruse speculations too far. 

Captain Mercer goes on to say, — 

" It was indeed, to me, a novel and interesting 
sight, although a Southern man, to look upon these 
emancipated slaves legislating for themselves, and 
discussing freely, if not ably, the principles of hu- 
man rights, on the very continent, and perhaps the 
very spot, where some of their ancestors were sold 
into slavery." 

We are rejoiced that a person who expresses sen- 
timents so subversive of American principles con- 
fesses himself to be a Southern man. We should 
have been sorry to see a descendant of the Pil- 
grims so forgetful of what is due to his ancestry. 
Plymouth Rock continues true to the faith of the 
better days of the Republic. 

Captain Mercer suggests some valuable hints in 
regard to the African slave-trade. He proposes to 



[ 139 ] 
establish a line of republics along the whole West- 
ern coast of Africa, and in that way to repress 
entirely this infamous traffic. Now, although the 
greater the number of republics the more presidents 
there would be to give dinners to our commodores, 
yet we think there are reasons of economy against 
such a scheme. Thirty-eight guns from each of our 
cruisers to each of the chief magistrates of these ex- 
perimental states would amount to a heavy expense 
in the course of the year. We think it woidd be 
more advisable to extend the able and efficient juris- 
diction of President Roberts along the whole line of 
coast. Then let the Congress of the republic invest 
the President with plenary powers, and place the 
whole Liberian navy and army at his disposal, and 
the thing is done. There is no knowing how much 
moral influence might be exerted if a proclamation 
of the President forbidding the traffic should be 
pinned to every palm-tree along the coast. The 
powers of the printing-press cannot be exaggerated. 
The same force which has just hurled a powerful 
European monarch from his throne would surely be 
able to crush an insignificant knot of African slave- 
traders, especially when that force is backed by the 
refined moral sense of Ashantee and Dahomey. Let 
an abundant supply of tracts be furnished to the 
powerful sovereigns of the West Coast, a perusal of 



C 140 ] 

which would serve the double purpose of instructing 
them in religion and in English. There are, we 
believe, some fifty or more of these potentates who 
acknowledge the sway of the republic and pay into 
the treasury their innocent tribute of a date-stone 
every quarter. 

Whatever we may think to be the best mode of 
putting an end to the African slave-trade, no patriot 
will hesitate a moment as to the necessity of put- 
ting it down. We feel sure that General Taylor is 
at least so far a Whig that he would approve of a 
protective measure of this description. No humane 
man doubts the wickedness of this odious business. 
But, apart from moral considerations, it interferes 
too much with a domestic branch of commerce not 
to demand our most earnest efforts for its extir- 
pation. While Congress is making an appropria- 
tion of fifty thousand dollars to pay for the negroes 
captured in the Amistad, an admirable occasion is 
offered for appropriating three or four resolutions 
to the commendation of the Colonization Society as 
an instrument in the hands of Providence for sup- 
pressing the foreign trade in human flesh. 

We hardly know what character to attribute to 
Captain Mercer. Sometimes we are inclined to think 
that he is an incendiary in disguise. Although he 
must be well aware (as what intelligent man is not?) 



., 



[ 141 ] 
that freedom is " no boon " to the African race, he 
yet hypocritically descants on the happiness of the 
Liberians, and expresses a fiendish wish that others 
may be plunged into all the horrors of a pitiless 
freedom. He even goes so far as to say : — 

" It is impossible to foresee what will be the fate 
of this infant republic struggling for national exist- 
ence ; but, whatever that fate may be, it cannot be 
denied that its career of advancement, up to this 
period, has been the most astonishingly rapid of 
any other people, under similar circumstances, that 
history, ancient or modern, brings to our know- 
ledge." 

It is impossible to estimate the deleterious effect 
of assertions like these upon the minds of the three 
million slaves of this country. As they are well 
known to be in the habit of reading the Liberator, 
this will doubtless meet their eye and assist that 
nefarious print in its efforts to make them discon- 
tented with that lot which renders them the hap- 
piest peasantry in the world. 

"We cannot follow Captain Mercer any farther. 
We trust that we have said enough to convince all 
readers that the Standard may lay claim to their 
support as a watchful guardian of American prin- 
ciples. We can only recommend that Government 
should be careful in future to send Northern men 



C 142 ] 
to the coast of Africa who will be very sure not to 
write home any letters that can be construed into an 
endorsement of any liberal principles (as they are 
called) whatever. 



EXCITING INTELLIGENCE 
FROM SOUTH CAROLINA 

JL hough drawn for a moment in another direction 
by the affairs of Europe, where kings have been 
swept away after their game was up as if they 
were but the ivory potentates of the chess-board, 
the eyes of the world, of course, instantly revert 
to South Carolina, and the anxiety to know what 
course that Power will take in case the present cri- 
sis becomes more intense than ever. Fortunately we 
are enabled to relieve in some measure the pain- 
ful suspense of mankind on this exciting topic. A 
meeting has been held at Charleston, Messieurs 
Butler, Burt, and Calhoun have spoken, the Empire 
has taken its resolution, and entered with renewed 
vigor upon its profound policy of nihilipilification. 

Historians are not always great men, though great 
men furnish the materials of history. Their pro- 
vince in this respect, however, does not extend be- 
yond the present, and we cannot but think that the 
Honorable A. P. Butler transcended his legitimate 
sphere in undertaking to manufacture past history 
outright. He says : — 



C !44 ] 

" The Southern States were equals when they en- 
tered into the Confederacy, and they never would 
have joined it had they anticipated the attempts 
made to degrade them whenever the North acquired 
the power of doing so." 

Now, unless Georgia and South Carolina only are 
implied in the word " Southern," the whole of this 
statement goes to show that it is not the "poor 
whites" alone who are suffering for the want of 
common schools in the slaveholding States. With 
the exception of those two colonies, the entire 
South, at the period referred to, not only antici- 
pated, but was ready to concur in, attempts to re- 
press the growth of Slavery, and even to extinguish 
it altogether. The Senator no doubt entertains the 
notion that cotton-planting has been carried on in 
South Carolina from the earliest ages, and that, 
when our first parents became aware of the necessity 
of garments, they imported calico thence to make 
them of. 

Mr. Butler, having once tried his hand at original 
composition, and probably finding history easier to 
make than he expected, allows himself to be borne 
forward by the inspiration of the moment into a re- 
gion of yet purer creativeness. He does not say that 
Bunker's Hill is on Sullivan's Island, or that Lex- 
ington in Kentucky was the scene of the Revolu- 



[ 145 ] 

tionary battle which goes by that name, but he ex- 
hibits a mental vigor capable even of triumphs such 
as these. He goes on to remark that, " when the 
Union was formed, the South was the stronger por- 
tion of it ! " And here we take leave of Mr. Butler, 
barely suggesting that however important his ser- 
vices as a statesman may be, he should no longer 
rob his country of the delight it would receive from 
his labors as a writer of amusing fiction. 

Mr. Burt, being a simple M. C, does not attempt 
to compete with a Senator in flights of imagination ; 
but as Mr. Butler had taken one step toward South 
Carolinian independence by breaking away from the 
servile trammels of history, he turns the forces of 
his rebellion in another direction and makes a vigor- 
ous attack upon the usurped prerogatives of gram- 
mar. " We would" he says, " be degradingly ex- 
pelled from New Mexico and California, and con- 
fined to prescribed limits." He then erects the word 
" North " into a nominative plural, and says, " So 
impatient were they (the North) for their victim 
that they would not even respect the Sabbath." He 
has here touched a fortunate chord, for if anything 
could be conceived capable of uniting the feelings 
of a slaveholding community, it must be an appeal 
to their religious sentiment. We have no doubt 
that this shocking instance of Northern irreligion 



C 146 ] 
created a sensible horror in the minds of those 
dealers in human flesh who happened to be present, 
for such personages are rather apt to be punctilious 
in paying their dues of mint, anise, and cummin. 
And, of a truth, we ourselves are fain to consider it 
a somewhat alarming symptom that anything should 
be able to draw the North away from that manu- 
facture of religious wooden-nutmegs to which it is 
wont to devote the first day of the week. Mr. Burt 
remarks in conclusion that — 

" It is supposed upon a moderate calculation that 
there are at this time in the Northern States and in 
Canada upwards of thirty thousand runaway slaves, 
and this was property which by justice and comity 
the Northern States were bound to assist in reclaim- 
ing. The remedy for these abuses was not to be 
found in the ascendancy of parties, but it depended 
on their own stout hearts and strong arms." 

In the fervor of his oratory he seems to forget 
that while the strong arms of the South were spread- 
ing terror and desolation through the Northern 
States and Canada, they would leave a hostile army 
of three millions in their rear. But we will not in- 
sist upon trifling items like these with gentlemen 
whose notions of statistics are so liberal. 

We come now to the speech of Mr. Calhoun. He 
begins by an assault upon Priscian's head which 



I 147 ] 
throws Mr. Burt quite iuto the shade, and puts the 
skull of that excellent grammarian beyond all hope 
from trepanning. Exhorting South Carolina to stand 
aloof from the coming presidential contest, he as- 
signs as one reason for so doing, that — 

" By entering into an active and heated political 
contest, each part abusing the candidate of their 
opponents and praising their own as exemplars of 
perfection, the State would be degraded to the level 
which they occupied." 

Not satisfied with having carried away the prize 
from Mr. Burt (from whom he accepts the emenda- 
tion of icould for should), he next undertakes to 
compete with Mr. Butler in historic fiction. " The 
Missouri Compromise," he says, " was proposed by 
the North, who urged it on Congress and sacrificed 
every Northern man who voted against it." He 
concludes, like the other speakers, that in case of 
the worst it would be the duty of South Carolina 
to sacrifice her compassionate feelings, and, cutting 
the rest of the Union adrift, to abandon it to its 
wretched fate. The corresponding member of the 
English Free Trade League does not seem to cor- 
respond with that body in principle, for he imme- 
diately proceeds to estimate the amount of duties 
to be levied at the port of Charleston. Upon these 
chickens, to be hatched at some future period from 



C J* 8 3 

eggs as yet unlaid, he collects a revenue larger than 
that of the present Union. 

In estimating the possibilities of the threatened 
revolution, the keen eye of a statesman like Mr. 
Calhoun detects at once certain elements of weak- 
ness in the body politic of the North. First in im- 
portance among these our profoundly informed 
politician places the Fourierites. It is painful to 
think of such men as Ripley, Shaw, D wight, God- 
win, and Greeley laying their heads together in a 
Catilinarian conspiracy. The moment South Caro- 
lina withdraws her protection, no doubt these red 
republicans will begin to throw up barricades. But 
Mr. Calhoun does not anticipate that the secession 
of his State will take place without a contest. The 
North will fight desperately against being cut off 
from the advantages which it now enjoys in the 
patronage of South Carolina. Mr. Calhoun expresses 
his willingness, old as he is, to take his share in the 
contest. Of course his share would be that of Gen- 
eralissimo, and we think he would do well, in that 
case, to import the sword used by Mr. Smith O'Brien 
during the recent military operations in Ireland. It 
would be, with its thrilling historic associations, an 
appropriate weapon. Mr. Butler would probably be 
quite competent to the command of the naval forces. 

How utterly childish is the scarecrow of Mr. 



[ 149 ] 
Calhoun's pumpkin-lantern rebellion ! As an attempt 
to scare the rest of the Union it is absurd, but what 
shall we say of it as a scheme to intimidate mani- 
fest and irretrievable Destiny ? We have all heard 
it said often enough that little boys must not play 
with fire, and yet if the matches are taken away 
from us, and put out of reach upon the shelf, we 
must need <ret into our little corner and scowl and 
stamp and threaten the dire revenge of going to bed 
without our supper. The earth shall stop till we get 
our dangerous plaything again. Dame Earth, mean- 
while, who has more than enough household mat- 
ters to mind, goes bustling hither and thither, as a 
hiss or a splutter tells her that this or that kettle of 
hers is boiling over, and before bedtime we are glad 
to eat our porridge cold and gulp down our dignity 
along with it. 

Mr. Calhoun has somehow acquired the name of 
a great statesman, and if it be great statesmanship 
to put lance in rest and run a tilt at the Spirit of 
the Age with the certainty of being next moment 
hurled neck and heels into the dust amid universal 
laughter, he deserves the title. He is the Sir Kay 
of our modern chivalry. He should remember the 
old Scandinavian mythus. Thor was the strongest 
of gods, but he could not wrestle with Time, nor so 
much as lift up a fold of the great snake which knit 



C 1 60 ] 
the universe together, and when he smote the Earth, 
though with his terrible mallet, it was but as if a 
leaf had fallen. Yet all the while it seemed to Thor 
that he had only been wrestling with an old woman, 
striving to lift a cat, and striking a stupid giant on 
the head. 

And in old times doubtless the giants were stupid, 
and there was no greater sport for the Sir Launcelots 
and Sir Gawains than to go about skewering them 
upon lances and cutting off their great blunder- 
ing heads with enchanted swords. But things have 
wonderfully changed. It is the giants nowadays 
that have the science and the intelligence, while 
the chivalrous Don Quixotes of Conservatism still 
cumber themselves with the clumsy armor of a by- 
gone age. On whirls the restless globe through 
unsounded time, with its cities and its silences, its 
births and funerals, half light, half shade, but never 
wholly dark, and sure to swing round into the happy 
morning at last. With an involuntary smile we 
leave Mr. Calhoun and his friends letting slip their 
packthread cable with a crooked pin at the end of 
it to anchor South Carolina upon the bank and 
shoal of the Past. 



TURNCOATS 

W hen we first went to the theatre, that which 
delighted us most, among the thousand and one mar- 
vels, was the swiftness with which a change of cos- 
tume was effected. The fairy had but to wave her 
wand — at once the peasant dress would fly off and 
the true prince stood confessed in all the splendor of 
soiled satin "and copper lace. As we sit now in our 
quiet corner of the pit and watch the droll panto- 
mime of politics, we are still more astonished at the 
dexterity with which we see coats turned before our 
very eyes. A moment ago the doughface livery was 
the only wear. Now everybody stands smiling in his 
new anti-slavery suit. 

We are quite persuaded that if any unforeseen 
contingency should remove General Taylor from the 
presidential canvass, the Whig party would insist on 
Mr. Garrison's waiving all personal considerations 
and allowing his name to replace that of the Abo- 
litionist General. Nothing short of such a nomina- 
tion would satisfy their fiery zeal. Should Mr. G. at 
this moment return to Boston from his short vaca- 



C J 5 2 3 
tion in cold water, the gentlemen of property and 
standing would drag him through the streets in a 
triumphal car by the very same rope with which they 
whilome conspired to raise him to a very different 
elevation. 

The Buffalo Convention seems to have wrought 
this singular and sudden transformation. Mr. Van 
Buren has played the part of the Pied Piper of 
Hamelin. As long as he was piping away only Demo- 
cratic rats, there was nobody like him. The Whig 
presses blew their trumpets before him, and it 
was doubtful for a short time whether he or General 
Taylor were the better Abolitionist. But presently 
the Whig children began to troop after him, and 
then all at once they began to discover the wolf's 
ears — no, the fox's brush — underneath the sheep's 
clothing. Then they could not away with such milk 
and water anti-slavery. He did not go far enough for 
them, not to mention the circumstance that he had no 
business to move forward an inch. He was pro-slavery 
in 1836, and it was his duty to continue so. They 
were shocked at such disgusting inconsistency. They 
revived that atrocious charge brought against him in 
the campaign of 1840, of raising cabbages in his gar- 
den at Kinderhook. They reproached him somewhat 
as Mr. Auld did Frederick Douglass when he called 
him a " recreant slave." They pointed to the broken 



c 1*8 : 

collar he had thrown away, and asked him if he were 
not ashamed of himself. They accused him of treach- 
ery to his former bad principles. Had he no respect 
for vested rights that he should infringe upon their 
patent for manufacturing anti-slavery professions on 
the eve of election ? Poor Mr. Van Buren ! they had 
served him so daintily for a day or two that he began 
to fancy himself a true Duke, but he finds that he 
was only plain Christopher Sly after all. 

It has been remarked that demireps are always 
loudest hi expressing their indignation, and always 
readiest to cast the first stone at any sister detected 
in frailty. Accordingly we find that Mr. Webster, 
with the tan of the Richmond October sun not yet 
out of his face, is shocked beyond measure at Mr. 
Van Bur en's former pro-slavery attitude. Sitting 
upon the fence at Marshfield (where we will venture 
to say he does not raise a single cabbage — that 
emblem of Taylorism) he tells his neighbors that, 
should he and Mr. Van Buren meet upon the same 
political platform, they could not look at each other 
without laughing. If Mr. Webster's face look as 
black as it is said to have done just after the Phila- 
delphia nomination, we think it the last thing in the 
world that any one would venture even a smile at. 
Mr. Webster finds fault with Mr. Van Buren because 
Northern Democratic senators voted in favor of the 



C 154 ]] 
annexation of Texas. But where was Mr. Webster 
himself ? If he foresaw that Texas would be a Tro- 
jan horse, why did he not say so ? If people would 
not come to hear him in Faneuil Hall, could he not 
have gathered his friends and neighbors together at 
Marshfield, as he did last week ? It is perfectly clear 
now by actual demonstration, as it was clear then to 
persons who thought about the matter, that if Mr. 
Webster had put himself at the head of the opposers 
of annexation, Texas would never have been annexed 
and he would have been the next President of the 
United States. The effect of the Free Soil movement, 
led by men with not a tithe of his influence, upon the 
Compromise Bill, puts this beyond a question. Where 
was the Wilmot Proviso then ? At the Springfield 
Convention a year ago, Mr. Webster laid claim to this 
as " his thunder." In the Marshfield speech he dates 
its origin as far back as 1787. A precocious Cyclops, 
truly, to be forging thunderbolts in his fifth year ! 
If Mr. Webster should five till 1852, and his retro- 
spective anti-slavery feeling go on increasing at its 
present ratio, he will tell us that he established the 
"Liberator" in 1831. 

Beyond doubt it is an encouraging sign of the 
times that Northern politicians are endeavoring to fix 
the stigma of pro-slavery upon their opponents. The 
weathercocks, feeling themselves compelled to the 



C 155 ] 
right-about, are assuring us that they have all along 
been laboring to produce so desirable a result, and 
that we owe the present prospect of clearer weather 
chiefly to their self-sacrificing exertions. Though no 
Abolitionist can feel satisfied with the Buffalo Plat- 
form, yet God forbid that we should not give our 
hearty encouragement to any party which is taking 
the first step toward a more honest life. To pay only 
the first cent in the dollar is better than a brazen 
fraudulent bankruptcy. As we said in our first hasty 
article upon the Buffalo Convention, it will be im- 
possible for the Free Soil party to stop when they 
have once carried the points which they are now con- 
tending for. In regard to Slavery they will only have 
conquered a negative position and to preserve them- 
selves from immediate dissolution they must assume 
an affirmative one. They must not only resist, but, in 
order to be free from the chance of another attack 
at the very first opportunity, they must invade the 
hostile territory and tear up those roots which supply 
sap to the war. Already they have made one move 
onward, and have avowed themselves Abolitionists to 
the extent of ten miles square. 

It is very evident that at the conventions of the 
new party the minds of the people run on before 
those of the speakers, and frame logical conclusions 
to the premises at which they would stop short. The 



C ^6 1 
farther the speaker ventures to go, the more sure he 
is of a hearty response on the part of his hearers. A 
fine abstract sentiment of freedom makes what the 
reporters call a sensation, a sharp thrust at the slave 
power will be applauded, but to bring down the house, 
Slavery itself must be denounced. " When I begin to 
see him blow red water," we once heard a whaler say, 
" then I feel good." So the people feel when they 
think the harpoon has reached a vital part of the 
monster Slavery. When they are told that it is a 
" wrong and a curse," and in the same breath are 
called upon to pledge themselves to let it alone, they 
are conscious of a decided non sequitur. Let us 
make a fable to illustrate it, founded on the Siamese 
Twins. 

Once upon a time Chang took to bad courses. He 
frequented bar-rooms and even more disreputable 
places, and at last became an inveterate sot. Now 
wherever Chang went, of course Eng was seen also, 
and his character began to suffer accordingly. Nor 
was this all. Whatever diseases Chang contracted, 
Eng suffered his share of, not to mention that, though 
a cold-water man himself, his liver was being burnt 
up by the brandy which ran down his brother's 
throat. Eng consulted his spiritual adviser, and 
wished him to reason with Chang and represent to 
him the wickedness of his conduct. " It would not 



C 157 ] 
do, my dear sir, it would not do at all. Mr. Chang 
is a member of my society and subscribes liberally 
for missions and other gospel purposes." Eng went 
to his lawyer. That gentleman merely laid his finger 
on the bond which held the two brothers together, 
and shook his head. In despair Eng sent for a sur- 
geon. " I would not venture an operation, lest both 
parties bleed to death." One day Eng was sitting on 
the edge of the gutter into which his brother had 
tumbled, when a medical man, thought rather ultra 
by the faculty, came up. Eng looked at him despair- 
ingly. " Give him his choice, as soon as he is sober, 
to begin a reform to-morrow morning, or to submit 
to the knife at once. In a few months the operation 
will be necessary to save your life." 



THE ATTITUDE OF THE RELI- 
GIOUS PRESS 

V^hance has thrown in our way a stray number of 
the " Christian Observer," a religious newspaper 
published in Philadelphia, and devoted to the Pres- 
byterian interest, though whether of the " Old " or 
" New " school we are not enough of a theologian 
to determine. As far as we are able to judge from 
the number before us, the paper is conducted with 
as much liberality as is consistent with its sectarian 
character. It contains a very fair account of the 
Woman's Rights Convention (though prefaced by a 
vulgar paragraph, evidently from another hand), and 
speaks of Abolitionists with a civility sufficiently rare 
in religious journals. 

There are one or two articles in it on which we 
propose to make a few comments. Our leading text 
will be a letter from the Rev. Dr. Bullard of St. 
Louis, Missouri, who is anxious that committees of 
ecclesiastical bodies appointed to draw up reports 
upon the subject of Slavery should visit the South, 
and reside there three years at least, in order to 



[ 159 2 
divest their minds of prejudice in the matter. The 
Doctor complains of the credulity of Abolitionists. 
Credulity we should be inclined to call an active 
faculty, rather than a mere passive quality, of the 
mind, since we see it every day diligently exerted in 
precisely the opposite manner from that which has 
alarmed Dr. Bullard, — for the swallowing, namely, 
of all kinds of pro-slavery fallacies and absurdities. 
But whether a faculty or a quality, we confess that 
we have not enough of it to believe that the days of 
an investigating committee would be very long in the 
land of Missouri. The initiatory steps of their pious 
enterprise would no doubt be agreeable enough. 
Probably Dr. Bullard would invite them to dinner. 
Perhaps some of his wealthier parishioners might do 
the same. And then we imagine them sallying forth, 
full of benevolence, to prosecute their inquiries 
among the " servants." We know not whether rail- 
roads are particularly plenty in Missouri ; but we 
have a strong impression that there is a species of 
impromptu rail-carriage, a gratuitous conveyance, 
which is sometimes, with a too boisterous hospitality, 
even forced upon persons conducting investigations 
of the kind we are speaking of. We can fancy Dr. 
Bullard (who seems to be a kind-hearted man) walk- 
ing beside the triumphal-car of his Northern friends, 
like Philip beside the chariot of the Ethiopian, but, 



I 160 ] 

unlike Philip, modestly declining to share in so 
ostentatious an elevation, and exhorting them to 
take a calm and unprejudiced view of the country 
through which they were passing. It is only ten 
years since two persons had their ears cropped for 
entering into private conversation with " servants " 
in Dr. Bullard's own city of St. Louis ; and we 
frankly admit that a committee of inquiry who 
went thither to obtain information on the subject 
of Slavery from anybody except the masters could 
afford an abbreviation in those organs as conven- 
iently as anywhere else. 

Dr. Bullard may flatter himself that his commit- 
tee would be treated with respect on account of 
their cloth ; but we cannot even leave him so small 
a ground for confidence as that. It was only the 
other day that a clergyman — and one, moreover, 
whom Providence had furnished with a full natural 
suit of the theological color — was sold in Kentucky, 
for fear he might possibly enter into conversation 
with that very class who are to form the subject of 
our supposed committee's investigations. 

Dr. Bullard seems desirous to discuss the matter 
in a reasonable frame of mind, and we shall there- 
fore endeavor to make a few suggestions for his 
reasoning faculty to exercise itself on. What objects 
would a committee propose to itself in making a 



[ lei ] 

visit to Missouri? To convince itself of the odious in- 
justice of Slavery ? It seems to us that a journey of 
twelve or fourteen hundred miles is hardly necessary 
for that. Dr. B. virtually admits it in his own letter. 
Should the committee make its expedition, then, to 
obtain material for the chapter in its report devoted 
to cruelty? There are thirty thousand living in- 
stances of it (according to Mr. Burt of South Car- 
olina) at this moment in Canada. Do men run away 
from kindness ? Has Dr. B. himself any notion of 
taking flight from St. Louis ? His parish must be care- 
ful that they do not make too much of him, or they 
may drive him to seek refuge in Canada West. 

Our worthy Doctor would no doubt admit that 
there is no necessity for making any reports at all 
on what is termed the abstract question of Slavery. 
With our friend Mr. Hosea Biglow, he is probably 

" willin' a man should go tol'lable strong 
Agin wrong in the abstract, for that kind o' wrong 
Is oilers unpopular and never gits pitied, 
It bein' a crime no one never committed ; " 

but, like that gentleman also, he would add the 
qualif ying remark, — 

" But he must n't be hard on partickiler sins, 
Cos that would be kickin' the people's own shins," 

which, as the Doctor's experience in the pulpit must 
have taught him, is an exercise less profitable than 



C 162 2 

exhilarating. We wish to bring this matter clearly 
before the mental eye of the Doctor, for whom, as 
an evidently amiable man, we have a sort of liking, 
if he will allow such a feeling on the part of an 
ultra Abolitionist. The Doctor, then, admits that 
" Slavery in the abstract " is a moral wrong. Now it 
is a universally conceded proposition that no insti- 
tution is so perfect in practice as it is in theory. 
Slavery, then, being in theory wrong, must be we 
know not what in practice. The horns of a dilemma, 
we fear, are not so comfortable a refuge as those of 
the altar, to which theologians commonly fly when 
pursued by the justice of anti-slavery. 

But our good Doctor complains (in a note) that, 
at any rate, Abolitionists are unapostolic in endeavor- 
ing to render the slaveholders odious. Whether we 
be so or not, our labor is at least entirely superflu- 
ous, for their very name saves us the trouble in ad- 
vance. That the apostles never denounced Slavery 
is an argument like that by which Fielding's New- 
gate chaplain defended his fondness for punch, 
which liquor, he said, pleased him, " the more espe- 
cially as it was nowhere spoken ill of in Scripture." 
If the Doctor can imagine Saint Peter attending an 
auction sale to purchase a " servant " who might 
look after his lines and nets while he himself was 
evangelizing, we believe that he 



" Could hold a fire in his hand 
By thinking of the frosty Caucasus." 

Such questions as that of Slavery are not to be 
argued upon the narrow ground of isolated instances 
of cruelty and ferocity. It is condemned by a wider 
and easier process of induction. It dares not enter 
the court of conscience the world over. j[Even King 
Obi and King Boy acknowledge the wickedness of 
Slavery in the abstract. But the mass of men have 
not time for a process of reasoning based on purely 
ethical premises. In endeavoring to convince them 
that certain institutions produce certain fruit, it is 
easier to do it by plucking a specimen from the tree 
before their very eyes, than by any kind of analysis 
or synthesis. Moreover, the Doctor should remember 
that the cruelty is an integral part of the system, 
is necessarily fostered by it, and forms the first link 
of one chain of abstract reasoning against it. Now 
will the Doctor show us how it is possible to render 
a crime odious, and at the same time leave the crim- 
inal in an amiable and attractive light? Does it 
render the thugs and assassins less repulsive that 
their atrocities were perpetrated on system, and that 
the whole community partook in them ? 

"We were so much diverted with the notion of Dr. 
Bullard's plan of a missionary committee, and the 
simplicity of mind displayed in the proposition had 



[ 164 J 
such a charm for us, that we thought it might do no 
harm to open the horn-book of anti-slavery, and by 
dint of repeating frequently that is A, that is B, 
get him accustomed to the sight of one or two of 
the first letters. 

There is an editorial article in the same paper in 
which the " New England Brethren " are called 
upon " to disseminate the principles of their Pilgrim 
Fathers over the wide and destitute fields of the 
Southwest." Now, a general court, composed wholly 
of flesh and blood Pilgrim Fathers, thought proper 
in 1645 " to write to Mr. Williams (understanding 
that the negroes which Captain Smyth brought 
were fraudulently and injuriously taken and brought 
from Guinea), that he forthwith send the negro 
which he had of Captain Smyth hither, that he may 
be sent home ; which this court do resolve to send 
back without delay." Inelegant in expression, but 
sufficiently to the point. So also in 1649, among 
the laws enacted for the punishing of capital crimes 
is this : " 10. If any man stealeth man or mankind, 
he shall surely be put to death. — Exodus xxi. 16." 
These are clearly not the Pilgrim Fathers of Fourth 
of July orations and religious editorials, but an alto- 
gether more substantial and uncomfortable kind. 
Setting aside for the moment our feelings in regard 
to capital punishment, we should agree with the 



c "55 : 

u Christian Observer " in liking to have the seed of 
this variety of the Mayflower scattered pretty liber- 
ally in the Southwest. But we have our fears that 
the second detachment of Pilgrim-Fatherhood would 
find the trees of the aboriginal forest in that section 
of the country hung with very strange fruit. 

As for other points in the editorial aforesaid, we 
will allow them, and certain propositions put forth in 
the front of another article of the same paper, to 
perform quietly for each other the office of Kilkenny 
cats, without any interference on our part. The 
article referred to is signed " S. C," and the editor in 
another column commends it to the attention of his 
readers. It commences with the following paragraph, 
to the sentiments of which we give hearty assent : 

Mr. Editor, — If to commit a wrong is censur- 
able, it is not less so to perpetuate it. " The partaker 
is as bad as the thief." So says the law of the land. 
So says the word of God. Paul was careful to urge 
upon his younger brother in the ministry the exer- 
cise of the strictest caution in this matter. " Lay 
hands suddenly on no man," he tells Timothy, "nei- 
ther be a partaker of other men's sins ; keep thyself 
pure." As saith the poet, — 

" He who allows oppression shares the crime." 



"THE CONQUERORS OF THE NEW 
WORLD AND THEIR BONDSMEN" 



T 



his is the title of a historical work, the first vol- 
ume of which has just been published in London. 
It is the beginning of an intended complete his- 
tory of Slavery, and, though the author has brought 
his narrative down only as far as the year 1512, is 
interesting as showing the small seed from which 
this deadly Upas-tree has sprung. Thinking that our 
readers will be interested in following the author in 
his course, we shall note the chief matters which 
have struck us in reading the book, preserving the 
order of chronology. 

The first slaves brought from Africa in modern 
times were ten negroes, whom in the year 1442 An- 
tonio Gongalvez obtained in exchange for two Moors. 
These Moors, who were always looked upon as legi- 
timate plunder, had been seized by Gongalvez upon 
the coast of Africa, he having been sent out by 
Prince Henry of Portugal on a voyage of discovery. 
Soon after (1474) we find that a trade in negro 
slaves had grown up. African slaves had by this 



L 16 '7 ] 
time, we are told, become very numerous in Seville. 
These " were treated very kindly, . . . being allowed 
to keep their dances and festivals, and one of them 
was named mayoral of the rest, who protected them 
as against their masters and before the courts of 
law, and also settled their private quarrels." Under 
date l-iT-4 is a letter from Ferdinand and Isabella 
" to a celebrated negroe, Quan de Valladolid, com- 
monly called the Negro Count," nominating him to 
this office. Among other passages in this letter is 
the following : " Because we know your sufficiency, 
ability, and good disposition, we constitute you 
mayoral and judge," etc. It is tolerably evident 
that Ferdinand and Isabella had but a limited know- 
ledge of those nicer proprieties which regulate the 
conduct of republicans toward persons of different 
complexion. Moreover it would appear that the in- 
herent incapacity for self-protection theory had not 
yet been broached, for we find here a black man 
not only allowed to take care of himself, but ap- 
pointed to the charge of others. We would not deal 
too hardly with their Catholic majesties for their 
shortcomings in these particulars, it being above 
three hundred years since they have been dead, and 
perhaps (if interfering with the designs of Provi- 
dence in the case of Ham be anything) something 
worse. 



[ 168 ^ 
All along during these first years of the slave- 
trade, the ostensible chief motive of the persons in 
power who encouraged it was the eternal salvation 
of the Africans. And we can easily believe them to 
be sincere without supposing any very prodigious 
amount of benevolence on their part. The truth is, 
that in most cases, probably, their charity began at 
home and tarried there. These good people believed 
(and that was an age when people believed what 
they did believe with considerable thoroughness) 
that they were thus making large deposits to stand 
in their names on the creditor side of the ledger of 
the Bank of Heaven, to be drawn on as happened 
to be convenient. If funds of this sort could be 
accumulated by sprinkling a score or two of Africans 
with holy water, and converting them from a mumbo- 
jumbo which they understood to one they did not 
understand, it was excellent pay considering the 
amount of work. Perhaps, as the importation of 
Africans increased, the ceremonial of sprinkling was 
performed wholesale on large numbers at once, by 
means of some kind of engine for the purpose, an 
economical proceeding somewhat similar to which 
we remember to have heard of in Georgia some two 
years ago. There is no doubt that this pious wish 
of getting the Africans baptized entered largely 
into the plans of those who encouraged the slave 



[ 169 n 

trade. The same argument (without the same faith) 
is urged upon us now by some persons of tender 
(or at least soft and pliable) consciences. It is truly 
refreshing to meet with a piece of stupidity whose 
origin we can distinctly trace, and which we thereby 
find to be only a little above three hundred years 
old. Generally we can follow them back as far as 
we have any historical record or even any legend, 
everywhere ready to get in the way of every new 
reformer and projector. We are thankful to find a 
comparatively young one, and to be able to realize 
that there were many long ages unvexed by it. 

A contemporary chronicler, who was an eyewitness 
of the partition of some cargoes of slaves brought to 
Portugal in 1444, has left upon record a very sim- 
ple and affecting narrative of it. We copy a few 
passages. The writer, Azurara, begins by praying 
God to forgive his tears, inasmuch as his human 
nature would get the better of his conscientious 
satisfaction at the eternal gain which was to repay 
these poor creatures for such bitter suffering. " But 
what heart was that, how hard soever, which was 
not pierced with sorrow, seeing that company. For 
some had sunken cheeks and their faces bathed in 
tears, looking at each other. Others were groaning 
very dolorously, looking at the heights of the hea- 
vens, fixing their eyes upon them, crying out loudly, 



as if they were asking succor from the Father of 
nature. Others struck their faces with their hands, 
throwing themselves on the earth. Others made 
their lamentation in songs, according to the cus- 
toms of their country, which, although we could 
not understand their language, we saw corresponded 
well with the height of their sorrow ; but now, for 
the increase of their grief, came those who had the 
charge of the distribution and began to put them 
apart one from the other in order to equalize the 
portions. Wherefore it was necessary to part chil- 
dren and parents, husbands and wives, and brethren 
from each other. Neither, in the partition of friends 
and relations, was any law kept, only each fell where 
the lot took him. . . . Who will be able to make 
the partition without great difficulty? For while 
they are placing in one part the children, that saw 
their parents in another, they sprang up persever- 
ingly and fled to them. The mothers enclosed their 
children in their arms, and threw themselves with 
them on the ground, receiving wounds with little 
pity for their own flesh, so that their children might 
not be torn from them." The good Azurara, who 
clearly has something more than a mere apparatus 
of systole and diastole in his bosom, saw deeper 
into this matter of the songs than most modern ob- 
servers. Nor does he fail to notice that the suffer- 



C '71 ] 
ings of these lambs, thrown, as it were, over the 
walls into the fold, found sympathy in the unadul- 
terated human instincts of the Portuguese crowd 
who witnessed them. 

That picture was painted four hundred and four 
years ago ! The simple chronicler had some art to 
make his colors stand wonderfully fresh and vivid. 
It was because he used a ground of simple human 
feeling, we fancy. But think of it ! for now nearly 
half a thousand years have these things been going 
on, only growing more and more cruel. Here is a 
picture which we should like to see hung in the 
parlor of the pious and kindhearted slaveholder, 
who makes it a principle not to part families, that 
he might see what would take place if it were to 
be said to him, " This night thy soul shall be required 
of thee." We suspect that Azurara would hardly 
have voted for General Taylor. 

In the accounts of the early voyages to the Afri- 
can coast, we have some scattered notices of the 
natives, which show that they were vastly better off 
then than after four hundred years of intercourse 
with white men and Christians. The first voyager 
who left a written diary of what he did and saw was 
Ca Da Mosto, whose expedition was made in 1454. 
He says of the people on the south side of the Sene- 
gal River, that " they are exceeding black, tall, cor- 



C !7a ] 

pulent, and well made. . . . Both men and women 
wash themselves four or five times a day, being very 
cleanly as to their persons, but not so in eating, in 
which they observe no rule. Although very igno- 
rant and awkward in going about anything which 
they have not been accustomed to, yet in their own 
business, which they are acquainted with, they are 
as expert as any European can be. They are full of 
words and never have done talking, and are for the 
most part liars and cheats. Yet, on the other hand, 
they are very charitable, for they give a dinner or a 
night's lodging and a supper to all strangers who 
come to their houses, without expecting any return. 
. . . They are extremely bold and fierce, choosing 
rather to be killed than to save their lives by flight. 
They are not afraid to die, nor scared, as other peo- 
ple are, when they see a companion slain." 

The discovery that in these people was the con- 
necting link between man and the baboon was re- 
served for later times and more scientific observers. 
Ca Da Mosto finds them well made, cleanly and hos- 
pitable, great liars (we imagine that he was not very 
explicit in unfolding his violent baptismal designs in 
regard to them), brave and contemptuous of death. 
No hint as yet of any peculiar odor by which they 
were distinguished. This particular mark of inferi- 
ority is discernible only to persons of very refined 



C 17.'! ] 
sensibilities and to vulgar ruffians reeking of ruin and 
tobacco. Perhaps some information on the subject 
might be obtained 1'ioin certain four-legged canine 
fellow soldiers of the modern Cineinnatus. It is curi- 
ous, by the way, that this olfactory stigma has been 
affixed to other oppressed races. It was formerly 
one of the apologies for maltreating the Jews. Sir 
Thomas Browne considers it with becoming gravity 
in his vulgar errors, and concludes that " if we con- 
cede a national unsavoriness in any people, yet shall 
we find the Jews less subject hereto than any." 

Ca Da Mosto sailed down the coast eight hundred 
miles to the southward of the Senegal and visited the 
country of a negro, King Budomel, who received him 
courteously. This Budomel seems to have been not 
altogether without some prudent and statesmanlike 
reflections on matters of religion, for he informed Da 
Mosto " that he looked upon the religion of the Eu- 
ropeans to be good, for that none but God could have 
given them so much riches and understanding." He 
seems also to have had some glimpses of the doctrine 
of compensation, declaring " that he believed the 
nesrroes were more sure of salvation than the Chris- 
tians, because God was a just Lord, and, therefore, 
as he had given the latter paradise in this world, it 
ought to be possessed in the world to come by the 
negroes, who had scarce anything here in comparison 



C !74 ] 
of the others." It is gratifying to us as palefaces to 
think that, however much of truth there might have 
been in these royal speculations at that time, the two 
races have been put more upon a footing of equality 
by the advantages of religious instruction which the 
colored people have had afforded them. 

It appears that as early as 1484, facilities were 
offered for christianizing Africa without so costly an 
expedient as a Colonization Society, or so cruel a one 
as carrying the natives thousands of miles to make 
slaves of them. In that year Congo was discovered 
by Diego Cam, who, at the request of the king of 
that country, took back with him to Portugal some 
of the sons of the principal men to be baptized and 
instructed in the Christian faith. In the same year 
the King of Benin sent ambassadors to the King of 
Portugal, requesting that priests might be sent to 
him. 

About the same time, also, a negro prince, named 
Bemoin, came to Portugal seeking assistance against 
a usurper by whom he had been ousted from his 
throne. The description of him is interesting. No- 
thing about natural inferiority thus far. " Bemoin, 
because he was a man of large size and fine presence, 
about forty years old, with a long and well arranged 
beard, appeared, indeed, not like a barbarous pagan, 
but as one of our own princes, to whom all honor 



c 175 : 

and reverence were due. With like majesty and 
gravity of demeanor he commenced and finished 
his oration. . . . And, taking leave of the King, he 
went to kiss the Queen's hand, and then that of the 
prince, to whom he said a few words, at the end of 
which he prayed the prince that he would intercede 
in his favor with the King. And thence he was 
accompanied to his lodgings by all the notibility that 
accompanied him." The attendants of Bemoin are 
spoken of by the same historian as "gentelemen." 

We shall continue our extracts in some future 
paper, and follow the progress of christianization 
to the West Indies. We shall there find the system 
of slavery becoming gradually more and more firmly 
and openly established, accompanied always with the 
most disastrous results both to the enslaver and his 
victim, demoralizing the one and destroying the other. 
For it is only in entering the service of the Devil that 
men are willing to pay a high price for the " situ- 
ation." 



"THE CONQUERORS OF THE NEW 
WORLD AND THEIR BONDSMEN" 



SECOND NOTICE 



T, 



he story of Columbus, no matter how often re- 
peated, can never lose the freshness of its interest ; 
so happily are the ideal and the real blended in it. 
The inspired faith of the great discoverer, sailing, 
as his sailors imagined, down the huge western 
slope of the world up which there could be no re- 
turn, and the splendid tangible result, are such as 
can never be repeated. It is only by solitary voy- 
ages across purely ideal oceans that new worlds can 
be discovered now. But the Columbus of such con- 
tinents can send back no feather-cinctured islanders, 
no fruits and plants to convince the unbelieving, 
and it is only in the very few that the record of 
his trials and his constancy excites deep emotion. 
But Columbus stands entirely alone. Only he was 
inspired by Faith and not Hope ; only he left an 
unbelieving and not an expectant world behind 
him. 

The great Genoese, like other original discover- 



C 177 ] 
ers, was a fanatic. His zealous faith, turned in 
whatever direction, has the same intensity and Leaps 
over all intermediate and subordinate particulars to 
the result. One chief ohject which he proposed to 
himself in exploring what he supposed would be a 
shorter passage to Indies was that, in this way, an 
army might be conducted by an easier route to Jeru- 
salem, to prosecute a new Crusade. Could Columbus 
have had a prophetic vision of the horrible fleet, 
freighted with its cargoes of festering humanity, 
that was to follow in his track, could he have known 
that those chains which were brought back with his 
ashes from Spain to St. Domingo were emblematic 
of the cruel slavery which his magnificent enter- 
prise entailed upon the hemisphere he discovered, 
perhaps he would have died in Genoa, known only 
as a dreamer to a few intimates. 

Columbus found in Hispaniola a race of simple 
and happy islanders, nearer to the Jesus of whom 
they had never heard than was that Christendom to 
whom the uncomprehended legacy of the gospel has 
been bequeathed. They had Christianity in all but 
the name, and Columbus brought them the cross. 
He himself says of them, " I knew they were people 
that would deliver themselves better to the Christian 
faith, and be converted more through love than by 
force." Yet Columbus with his own hand sowed 



C 178 ] 
the fatal seed from which sprang the horrible system 
of slavery. Let us not be too hasty in judging him. 
The truth is that he was so absorbed in ulterior ob- 
jects, so desirous of convincing Ferdinand and Isa- 
bella that the new world he had given them would 
bring a revenue to Spain, that men were either 
wholly disregarded by him, or looked upon merely 
as the pawns upon the great chessboard where he 
was playing his game with the eyes of all Europe 
upon him. 

As long as Isabella lived, though she was proba- 
bly more sincerely anxious than any one else for 
the christianization and the consequent salvation of 
the natives of her new possessions, her woman's 
heart instinctively recoiled from any attempt, how- 
ever daintily veiled, to enslave them. Amid eager, 
steelclad adventurers " who hid the avaricious heart 
under the red cross," and cunning cowled marauders 
lusting for spiritual dominion, with what a gracious 
light does her image seem invested, covering her 
poor islanders with the wings of her womanly in- 
stinct ! Let us give one more passage in which Co- 
lumbus bears his testimony to the disposition of the 
natives, and then see to what account the Chris- 
tians turned it. " They are a loving and uncovetous 
people, so docile in all things, that I assure your 
Highness that I believe in all the world there is not 



I 179 ] 
a better people or a better country. They love their 
neighbors as themselves, and they have the sweetest 
and gentlest way of talking in the world, and always 
with a smile." 

The first step toward the establishment of Slavery 
was the division of the Indians into what we called 
repartimicntos. Under this system a certain num- 
ber of natives were bound out, so to speak, to dif- 
ferent colonists, either to be worked on the farms 
or in the mines. The time of this compulsory ser- 
vice was limited, and the poor creatures were to 
work under the direction of their caciques. This 
was slavery in everything but the name, and it was 
not loner before the Indians came to be considered 
as chattels. No matter what the system, the most 
horrible cruelties were perpetrated, especially at the 
mines. And it is worth remarking, at a time when 
we have been " acquiring " territory, a part of which 
is said to contain mines of gold and silver, that the 
miners in these first Spanish settlements became in- 
variably beggars. 

A curious story is told of the notion which one 
of the Caciques named Hatney had of the Deity 
worshipped by the Spaniards. " Calling his people 
together, and recounting the cruelties of the Span- 
iards, he said that they did all these things for a 
great lord whom they loved much, which lord he 



C 18° ] 
would now show to them. Forthwith he produced 
a small basket filled with gold. ' Here is the lord 
whom they serve and after whom they go ! ' " 

We need not trace the gradual steps by which 
slavery was introduced, nor dwell upon the cruelties 
of the Spaniards. These last are already branded 
with an infamous notoriety, and were not so much 
exceptional as necessary incidents to the system. 
But it will be interesting to see how these things 
impressed the lookers-on, and especially what course 
was taken by the clergy as the spiritual guides of 
the perpetrators of them. There were in Hispaniola 
about fifteen Dominican Monks, living under the 
government of their vicar, Peter de Cordova. Re- 
membering that these men belonged to the order 
whom Protestants know chiefly as the founders of 
the inquisition, and seeing them actuated by the 
purest and most devoted humanity, we shall arrive 
at the conclusion with which Dr. King sums up his 
epitaph on George II. and be satisfied that they 
" neque deos, nee lupos fuisse, sed homines" 

Having satisfied themselves of the cruelty with 
which the natives were treated, they "determined 
that their protest should express the general opinion 
of their body ; and they accordingly agreed upon a 
discourse to be preached before the inhabitants of 
St. Domingo, and signed their names to it." They 



C 181 ] 
chose one of their members, Brother Antonio Mon- 
tesino, to preach it — "a man of great asperity in 
reproving vice." They also, in order to ensure a full 
church, caused it to be given out that a discourse 
particularly concerning the inhabitants was to be 
delivered on the next Sabbath. In short, they ob- 
tained the use of the cathedral, and advertised the 
first Anti-slavery lecture. We have no report of 
Father Antonio's sermon. We only know that he 
" declared with very piercing and terrible words, 
that the Voice pronounced that they were living in 
mortal sin." Our author supposes that the discourse 
might have ended somewhat as did the first sermon 
of Vieyra in St. Luiz, 1653, which he quotes from 
Southey's " History of Brazil." " But you will say 
to me, this people, this republic, this state, cannot 
be supported without Indians. Who is to bring us a 
pitcher of water, or a bundle of wood ? Who is to 
plant our Mandioc ? Must our wives do it ? Must 
our children do it ? (Hear this, Messrs. Clay and Cal- 
houn.) In the first place, as you will presently see, 
these are not the straits in which I would place you ; 
but if necessity and conscience require it, then, I 
say, yes ! and I repeat it, yes ! you and your wives 
and your children ought to do it ! We ought to 
support ourselves with our own hands ; for better 
is it to be supported by the sweat of one's own 



C l82 3 

brow than by another's blood. Oh ye riches of 
Maranham, what if these cloaks and mantles were 
to be wrung ? They would drop blood." 

But whatever Father Antonio's words were, they 
produced their effect. It seems as if we were read- 
ing a story of to-day, except for the constancy of 
the preacher. The inhabitants met together, resolved 
that the Father must retract, and sent a deputation 
to convey their resolution to the monastery, and to 
say that if the monks preached such " delirious 
things" they had better return to Spain at once. 
After a long parley, the committee left with the 
assurance that the matter should be touched upon 
in the next Sabbath's discourse, as they supposed 
with an ample apology. But Father Antonio had a 
conscience. He repeated his former statements and 
reproofs and only urged them the more earnestly. 

The result was that the aggrieved inhabitants 
sent out a Franciscan (Alonso de Espinal) to make 
complaints in Spain. On the other hand, the Do- 
minicans sent out Father Antonio as their ambassa- 
dor. The result was that the earnest Antonio con- 
verted his rival into an ally, and a body of laws 
was established for the protection of the Indians, 
and the regulation of their affairs. But it was too 
late. It is nevertheless interesting to read of any 
benevolent effort, even if unsuccessful, and we learn 



c 'S3 : 

from this story that the Catholic clergy in the early 
part of the sixteenth century did not consider it out 
of their province to interfere between master and 
slave. 

With the passage of this body of laws, the vol- 
ume before us ends, having brought the history 
down to the period when the rapid extinction of the 
Indians began to make it necessary to import fresh 
victims from Africa. 



CALLING THINGS BY THEIR 
RIGHT NAMES 

JL he excellent Brother Anselm was the fortunate 
occupant of one of the most uncomfortable caverns 
in the Thebaid. Exposed to the rain during the wet 
season and to the sun during the dry, not a day 
passed which did not add to the hermit's claims upon 
an eternally blissful hereafter. He had so reduced 
himself by fastings and flagellations, and had be- 
come so dry and brown by exposure, that there was 
no farther step left to him unless from being a liv- 
ing mummy to being a dead one. A zealous Homo- 
ousian, he had not only confuted, but assisted in 
burning, several Homoi-ousian heretics, an operation 
easily performed with men whose piety consisted in 
rendering themselves conveniently sapless. It may 
be supposed that so eminent an example of devotion 
would not be without disciples, and among those 
none was more ardent than Brother Theodoric. 
This Theodoric was a worthy hermit from whom no 
perseverance in mortification could expel a tendency 
to adipocere, and upon whom the extraordinary 



[ 185 ] 
tenuity of the holy Anselm consequently made a 
deeper and more venerable impression. 

Anselm, having little farther to do with his own 
sins, had a great deal of time to devote to those of 
other people, and, having long considered with him- 
self the various atrocities perpetrated in different 
parts of the world, came at last to the conclusion 
that there was nothing so altogether revolting to 
human nature as the practice of cannibalism. 

For many years he revolved the matter in his 
cavern, till he became so possessed by it that he 
could talk and think of little beside, and his fellow 
hermits, who agreed about nothing else, became 
unanimous upon one point, namely, that Brother 
Anselm was crazy and a bore. As his orthodoxy 
was above suspicion, and his hallucination not of a 
kind which would warrant them in making a bonfire 
of him at once, and so getting him peaceably out of 
the way, they were rejoiced when he announced to 
them one day that he felt a movement of the spirit 
to go upon a mission to the Cannibal Islands, and 
accordingly encouraged him in his pious design, 
and assisted him to set forth in the prosecution of 
it. Theodoric, whose fatter and more sluggish na- 
ture was slowly penetrated by impulses, but in which 
impressions once made were exceedingly durable, 
was not yet ready to accompany his master. 



C l86 1 

After passing through a great many perilous ad- 
ventures, in his escape from which Anselm recog- 
nized the manifest finger of Providence, he arrived 
at the sphere of his enterprise. He found that the 
inhabitants of the Islands had not been belied, but, 
though burning with indignation and zeal, he re- 
solved to master their language thoroughly before 
commencing his labors as a reformer. This occupied 
the greater part of a year, during which time he was 
treated with kindness and hospitality by the natives, 
who were, perhaps, induced to contribute to his sus- 
tenance by an economical forethought of some fu- 
ture feast at which he should passively, rather than 
actively, assist. However this may be, these civilities 
and attentions insensibly softened the mind of the 
apostle toward the objects of his mission, and the 
constant sight of the odious practice against which 
he came to preach robbed it by little and little of 
the vividness of its horror. 

Being at length perfectly accomplished in the 
language of the country, he proposed to make a 
public delivery of his testimony, and for this pur- 
pose selecting a day of public rejoicing, he inter- 
rupted the festivities of the chief market-place by a 
cogent appeal to the throng of revellers upon the 
sin of man-eating. He was immediately seized by 
the enraged populace, who, after a consultation in 



[ 187 ] 
which it was voted that he was too lean for any 
purpose of practical utility, resolved to carry him 
before the King. 

If Anselm had been asked for his conception of 
this potentate, while he was yet tossing about on 
shipboard, he would doubtless have drawn a not 
very flattering imaginative likeness, in which the 
peculiar expression of the hyena and the ghoul 
would have been blended in tolerably equal propor- 
tions. But his residence in the principal island of 
his majesty's possessions had cleared his mind of 
many erroneous preconceptions, and he was not, 
therefore, surprised when, after some preliminaries 
of etiquette, he was ushered into the presence of a 
middle-aged man of refined and intelligent features, 
and uncommonly prepossessing address. 

The fervor of the missionary had been not a 
little roused by some of the rather boisterous atten- 
tions of the mob, and, accordingly, no sooner did 
he find himself in the royal presence, than he gave 
vent to his suppressed indignation in a diatribe 
against man-eating, in which sacred majesty itself 
was not spared. The courteous monarch waited with 
an air of polite but unconvinced attention until the 
missionary had fully relieved himself of his testi- 
mony, and then signified his intention of conversing 
with him in private. Anselm was rather annoyed at 



C l88 1 

the wholly unruffled manner of the King, who had 
that polish of character from which reproofs and 
uncomfortable suggestions slipped off like rain from 
a duck's back. 

When they were alone together, his majesty re- 
marked with a gracious smile, " We always call it 
mutton, as our ancestors have done from time im- 
memorial." 

" But it is man's flesh, nevertheless, and it makes 
no difference what you call it. You may throw dust 
in the eyes of conscience, but you cannot impose 
upon God." 

"Excuse me, excellent sir, but it does make a 
difference. Hereditary sins, heirlooms of barbarism, 
in short, atrocities to which we have been educated, 
cannot be looked upon in the light of abstract 
wickedness." 

Anselm had been too long a theologian not to 
love a quibble with all his heart, but, after a mo- 
ment's reflection, he replied, " We are always tri- 
fling with ourselves and compromising with our 
vices, when we cease to call things by their right 
names. The spirit of the Lord hath sent me hither 
to be as the voice of one crying in the wilderness 
against the hideous iniquity of — of — " 

Here the missionary was staggered by an expres- 
sion of polite deprecation in the countenance of the 



C 189 3 
King, who quickly added with a bland smile, " mut- 
ton-eating. My dear sir, things are to us precisely 
what they seem to us. The practice which you so 
ably and eloquently reprehend (allow me to say) has 
become, as it were, a part of our social system. A 
sudden change would be productive of the most 
alarming results. In the first place, our prisoners 
of war, if we ceased to dispose of them in the way 
which both we and they consider inevitable, would 
become very dangerous members of society. Accus- 
tomed to expect nothing but the tin-kitchen and the 
dredging-box, and thrown upon their own resources 
for employment, they would become turbulent and 
fill our now peaceful dominions with excesses and 
insurrections. These social changes (which I grant 
to be desirable) must be brought about gradually, 
by persons familiar with our position and our hab- 
its of thought, and, indeed, identified with them. 
Now, I have a proposition to make to you which, I 
trust, will receive your mature consideration. After 
a careful examination of different religious systems, 
I have become satisfied that Christianity is best 
adapted to secure the permanence of a paternal des- 
potism like our own. It preserves this world to 
those who have it now, and provides another world 
for those whose share of this is limited. The upper 
classes retain those privileges and luxuries which 



C 190 ] 
long habit has rendered necessary to them, and the 
masses get that invaluable boon — religion. I am 
anxious to have this admirable system introduced 
here as it is practised in Christendom. We have no 
established system of orthodoxy. You have a ready- 
made one to dispose of. To be the means of con- 
verting a whole people would be something after 
your own heart. You shall be my Pontiff and Minis- 
ter of Public Religion, with an establishment suited 
to your rank. It is seldom that the propagandist 
has such an occasion offered to him." 

"But Christianity is utterly incompatible with the 
eating of — of — mutton," stammered Anselm. 

" All in good time," replied the King. " As one 
of ourselves, you will have opportunities of effecting 
reform which would be entirely denied to you if 
you attempted to work from without. Indeed, it is 
your only chance, for, if you decline my proposition, 
the executioner is in readiness, and this glorious 
opportunity must await some wiser and less head- 
strong evangelist." 

" Allow me three days to consider," pleaded An- 
selm. The three days were granted. 

Let us now return to the Thebaid, where, after 
six years had gone by, the spirit of missionary en- 
terprise had at length pierced through to the heart 



[ 191 ] 

of Brother Theodoric. In spite of every species of 
maceration, growing daily plumper than ever, and 
having a fixed idea that the gate of heaven was 
only wide enough to admit living skeletons, he 
looked with increasing horror at the round and top- 
like shadow which his irreligious person cast upon 
the smooth white sand of the desert. He began to 
think that his obesity was a judgment upon him 
for having allowed the sainted Anselm to undertake 
his holy enterprise alone. Becoming at last fully 
persuaded that this theory was the true one, he re- 
solved to follow in the steps of his friend and spir- 
itual father. He accordingly embarked, and after a 
short and prosperous voyage arrived at the Canni- 
bal Islands. Unable to make himself intelligible in 
words, he expressed as well as he could by signs his 
disgust at the cuisine of the natives. He was per- 
haps over-desirous of the crown of martydom, and 
was certainly in a fair way to obtain it. He was not 
much of a casuist, and made no nice distinctions 
as to the precise manner or occasion of his roasting, 
it being sufficient for his purposes if the ceremony 
were gone through with, no matter to what end. 

In the mean time Anselm was rapidly earning the 
enviable title of Apostle to the Cannibal Islanders. 
He had convinced himself that his majesty was right 
and that men must be approached gently and tenderly, 



C 192 3 

and that as sovereign Pontiff his sphere of usefulness 
and his opportunity for introducing reforms would 
be incalculably enlarged. Accordingly, he did his 
best to view things from a Cannibal Island point of 
view, and finally succeeded so entirely that he found 
an authority in Scripture for what he mildly called 
their most striking peculiarity. This authority was 
not other than a passage in relation to certain de- 
vourers of widows and orphans, by applying to which 
the rules of interpretation he had become familiar 
with in his Homo-ousian controversies, he produced 
most extraordinary results, which had a very favor- 
able influence in preparing the minds of the Island- 
ers for the reception of the Gospel truths. A custom 
sanctioned by Scripture was of course a thing to be 
commended rather than preached against, and it was 
not long before the zealous Pontiff discovered that 
the present state of things was the best that could be 
devised for all parties. He even preached a discourse 
in the public prison urging it upon the victims con- 
fined there (many of whom had been converted by 
his labors) that it was their duty as Christians to be 
as tender as possible, and not, by wicked and carnal 
toughness, to carry their revenge even beyond the 
confines of the dripping-pan, where all private ani- 
mosities should cease forever. 

Now, as in other countries, Princes and Great 



C !93 ] 
Nobles have forests in which the game is preserved, 
so did the chief persons in the Cannibal Islands have 
certain perquisites in regard to their peculiar kind of 
mutton, and it so happened that the extraordinarily 
fine sheep Theodoric fell to the share of the Head 
of the Church. That eminent and godly man had 
now reached the point he so earnestly desired. He 
was in all respects identified with the people he had 
converted, looked at all objects precisely as they 
did, and was consequently now ready to commence 
reformer with reasonable hopes of success. But, 
curiously enough, the nearer he approached the 
long-desired position, the fewer grew the objects of 
reform, till, when it was fairly reached, he could see 
absolutely nothing which seemed to him in need of 
amendment. 

Over the subsequent history of Theodoric we must 
draw a veil. Only the Pontiff, in a discourse wherein 
he set forth the providential fact that blessings were 
equally distributed over all parts of the world, so that 
a deprivation was pretty sure to be balanced by some 
corresponding advantage, used the following illustra- 
tion — " How else," exclaimed he, with impressive 
unction, " shall we account for the circumstance that 
the arid waste of the Thebaid produces mutton of 
such size and flavor?" 



PRO-SLAVERY LOGIC 

JLf, as it has been often said, America be a kind of 
posterity in relation to Europe, it will follow that 
Europe must in some sense be a past to us. Now, 
although it be proverbial that men do not profit by 
the experience of the past, yet it seems worth the 
while to call their attention to it while it is being 
acted on a contemporaneous stage. 

As the world, geologically considered, presents 
several different periods of development existing side 
by side, so, if we look at it ethnologically, we shall 
find that different parts of it exhibit at this very mo- 
ment nearly all the several stages of societary ad- 
vancement, as if to aid us in the study of those social 
problems which more and more usurp the attention 
of the age. One would think that those who will not 
read Fom'ier might, at least, spell out a line or two 
in the open volume of the world. 

It would be impossible even to enter upon the 
consideration of topics so vast and so various within 
the compass of a single article. All that we propose 
is to draw the attention of our readers to a single 



[ 195 ] 
point which lias attracted our own notice, and which 
has a bearing' upon that subject to which our reform- 
atory efforts are more especially devoted. Though 7 
chattel slavery be the most odious shape in which / 
oppression presents itself, it is well for us to be accus- 1 
tomed to consider the abolition of it, not as an end, 
but as a step toward a more perfect reorganization 
of society. 

At the time when the election of a slaveholder to 
the Chief Magistracy renders it almost certain that 
Congress will pass a new Compromise bill extend- 
ing slavery into vast territories at present free from 
its blasting influence, it is well to look at some of 
the remoter and more general consequences likely to 
ensue from such an act of desperate wickedness. It 
is true that some eloquent political orators, with their 
throats hardly yet clear from the gulping swallow of 
their former professions of principle, tell us that the 
condition of the slave is improved in exact proportion 
as the institution of slavery is diffused over a larger 
surface. This is a point which we shall not stop to 
consider, holding it for certain that the condition of 
a slave can never be improved. As far as Slavery is 
concerned, the Free States (some of them) are as far 
advanced as England was in 1772 when the case of 
Somerset was decided. They are decidedly less en- 
lightened than the judicial tribunals of England were 



C 196 ] 
four centuries before, when it was held that a serf 
established his title to freedom by his ability to escape 
from the power of his lord. The position of the Free 
States in this respect reminds us of an anecdote 
related by Northcote, the painter, of an old Ger- 
man musician who had undertaken the arduous task 
of teaching his gracious majesty George the Third 
to play on the violin. The King having asked his 
instructor for an opinion of his proficiency, the 
adroit courtier satisfied at once his conscience and his 
dread of giving offence by furnishing his pupil with 
the following certificate : " May it please your Ma- 
jesty, there are three classes of violin-players. There 
are those who play very well, those who play very 
badly, and those who cannot play at all. It affords 
me unbounded gratification to certify that the talent 
and commendable application of your Majesty has 
enabled you to reach the second class." In the same 
way there are three kinds of lovers of freedom, — 
those who encourage it as much as they can, those 
who encourage it as little as they can, and those who 
do not encourage it at all. It is gratifying to be 
able to say that the Free States have already ad- 
vanced to the second class. 

But the circumstance which we wished to bring 
to the notice of our readers in the present article — 
and it is one whose relation to the question of 



[ 197 ] 
Slavery is very apparent — is this : that the struggle 
which is now convulsing Europe is of a dual nature, 
resulting from the effort of races to establish their 
national individuality, and of classes to acquire priv- 
ileges long unjustly denied, or to retain those as 
lODg and as unjustly usurped. The latter is unques- 
tionably that in which the lover of his race will 
take the deepest interest, and which is likely to pro- 
duce the most lasting and important results ; but at 
the same time it cannot escape attention that the 
former is characterized by even a deeper bitterness 
of animosity. 

When the news of the Parisian insurrection of 
June reached this country, we denied, a priori, that 
it was a movement of the dregs of the people, and 
preferred to agree with those who considered it as 
the unwise effort against reaction of men convinced 
of the rottenness of the existing condition of things. 
A statistical return has just been made of 3,423 
insurgents recently transported, in which they are 
classed according to their ages and professions. 
Among these convicts are 7 literary men, 2 law- 
yers, 1 physician, 2 engineers, 2 chemists, 3 school- 
masters, 3 medical students, 1 law student, 8 book- 
keepers, 2 reporters, 36 historical painters, 8 archi- 
tects, 29 sculptors, and 5 booksellers. The instances 
sufficiently sustain the view we then took. They 



C 198 ] 

show the widely extended nature of the dissatis- 
faction, and also that when matters have reached 
that crisis which renders a social revolution inevi- 
table, the armies of the extremest left will be re- 
cruited from nearly all ranks of society. Meanwhile 
these violent attempts, though they seem to aid the 
very reaction they are intended to stay, give point 
and force to the arguments of the peaceful reorgan- 
izes, and bring converts to their doctrines. 

Let us now glance for a moment at the causes 
which foster and keep alive the spirit of Race, and 
prevent assimilation among the distinct families of 
Man. It needs not to look very far. It is among 
the conquered and the oppressed that the traditions 
of race are most fondly cherished and most perti- 
naciously clung to. In proportion as their condition 
is worse their imagination loves to go back to the 
past, and to picture a former state as happy as their 
present one is degraded. If there be no authentic 
foundation for this legendary greatness (as among 
the Jews), they will create for themselves a fictitious 
pristine grandeur which has to them all the sub- 
stance of reality. It is hope reversed, and exercising 
itself in the past instead of the future. As instances 
of the fact that race, most strongly influences those 
living in a state of subjection, we need only mention 
the Jews, the Poles, and the Irish. Where all are 



[ 199 ] 
admitted to equal privileges, these imaginary bound- 
ary-lines are very rapidly obliterated. French will 
be spoken in Canada long after it has become a 
dead language in Louisiana. 

In making an application of these facts to the 
institution of slavery in the United States, we wish 
to leave the moral aspect of the case out of view 
altogether. We prefer to consider it as universally 
admitted that Slavery is a wrong and a sin, in the 
closest and most reproachful application of tKose r ' 
two wordsvf Let us see what Slavery will gain (re- 
garded only as a social phenomenon) by extension 
over a wider surface. 

The condition, not only of the American slave, 
but of the colored man in America, is such as pre- 
serves in their sharpest completeness the dividing 
lines of both race and class. The causes, therefore, 
which are now producing anarchy in Europe may 
be expected to combine in bringing about yet more 
shocking results here. By extending what is called 
the Area of Freedom, the increase of the servile 
population will be accelerated, while (since the pre- 
sence of Slavery acts as an effectual bar to the influx 
of free settlers) the class of oppressors is scattered 
over a larger surface and can accordingly concen- 
trate less easily for purposes of coercion or defence. 
It will not do to argue too strongly from the docility 



and affectionateness of the African temperament, 
for the history of Haiti, written in letters of fire and 
blood, will confute any such course of reasoning. 

It is an admitted fact, also, that African slavery 
presses with a nearly equal degrading influence upon 
the nonslaveholding whites as upon the slave, and we 
quoted from the list of the Parisian insurgents chiefly 
to show that, when social disorganization has reached 
a certain point, there is a natural union of all except 
the highest class, not only against that highest class, 
but against the system whose necessary tendency is 
to divide men at last into a highest and lowest with 
no intermediate grade. 

Though our American slaves are cut off as much 
as possible from every avenue of instruction, yet it 
is impossible to prevent a certain gradual diffusion 
of intelligence among them, the more especially as a 
large class (those employed as domestics) are brought 
into immediate contact with a higher order of refine- 
ment and education. The necessity, therefore, of im- 
mediate emancipation grows stronger every day, and 
step by step with it advances the danger of insur- 
rection. The further extension of Slavery, degrading 
as it would be to us as a nation, would nevertheless 
we think hasten the day of its forcible extinction by 
exactly as much as it put off the hope of peaceful 



C 2Q1 1 

emancipation. There is no way in which injustice •-. 
can fortify itself long. Not only are there enemies 
within the citadel, but its own improvidence will 
sooner or later starve it out. 






IRISH AND AMERICAN 
PATRIOTS 

X he recent decision of the English Government 
not to allow the sentences of Mr. O'Brien and his 
fellow patriots to be carried into execution shows 
an advance of public sentiment in regard to capital 
punishment which we cannot but regard as of con- 
siderable significance. It is no proof of the human- 
ity of the government, but only an evidence that 
they felt that so barbarous and shocking an exhibi- 
tion would not do. It was not that the punishment 
seemed too grave for the offence, for, however the 
English might profess to look upon the rebellion as 
a farce, the preparations they made to suppress it 
show that it was a very serious matter to them. The 
simple truth is that this exhibition of public revenge 
was to take place on a scaffold lofty enough to 
attract the eyes of all England. It is just as bad 
and just as disgusting to strangle John Brown as 
Mr. Smith O'Brien, only in Brown's case the public 
do not have their attention drawn that way. 

But beside the feeling of disgust that a refined 



I 203 ] 
woman, brought up decently, and acting as a repre- 
sentative of a great nation, should be called upon to 
sign a warrant for the choking, disembowelling, and 
hacking in pieces of half a dozen helpless men, there 
was probably a vague and half-acknowledged per- 
ception of the abstract injustice of the sentence. 
Should the English people murder in cold blood 
these men whom they had deliberately made rebels 
of ? Before the outbreak of the late Irish Revolt, 
we expressed our opinion of the entire futility of 
any attempt at a forcible redress of the wrongs of 
Ireland. But not the less on this account do we 
feel for those wrongs and sympathize with the men 
who, no matter how abortively or unwisely, have 
striven to remedy them. Efforts like theirs must be 
judged by the intention rather than by the event, 
and though they may not be permitted to seal their 
devotion with their blood, they have a right to the 
title of martyrs in the cause of freedom. 

The tone of the English press, even of the Liberal 
part of it (with few exceptions), has been absolutely 
brutal in regard to the affairs of Ireland. It has always 
been one of John Bull's many boasts that he never 
struck an enemy who was down. But Smith O'Brien 
and Meagher have been assailed by a downright 
mob of journalists, and pelted with every derisive 
epithet in the vocabulary of hatred and contempt. 



C 2 °4 ] 
To the solid Englishman, altogether too heavy to 
be lifted off the ground by enthusiasm, nothing 
is so terrible as ridicule, and accordingly the 
whole aim of British journalism has been to ren- 
der the Irish movement ridiculous. The last thing 
that John Bull gets an understanding of is the 
character of a neighbor, and he accordingly thinks 
that the Irishman is to be cured by the same medi- 
cine which is so effectual in his own case. John 
knows how absurd it would be to attempt to carry 
away the House of Lords by a flourish about Runny- 
mede, or to rouse the enthusiasm of the Commons 
by a burst of eloquence on the subject of Naseby or 
Worcester, and so he applies the same rule to his 
neighbor across the Channel. It seems not to occur 
to him to consider whether, as the blame of Ireland's 
misery lies chiefly at his own door, it would not be 
possible for him to discover the means of remedy. 

We could hardly believe our eyes when we read in 
the London "Examiner" a serious proposal to main- 
tain a fleet upon the Irish coast for the reception of 
loyalist fugitives in case of another rebellion. But 
even this is not considered enough, for the same pa- 
per goes on to suggest a line of forts along the shore 
for the same purpose. How valuable must be a pro- 
vince which must all the time be held by the throat 
and half strangled now and then by way of preven- 



[ 205 ] 

tion ! We were proceeding at once in the usual 
Brother Jonathan strain to thank God that we 're 
not as other men are, when we recollected that we 
also had our Ireland, and were engaged in holding 
our private and peculiar wolf by the ears. 

It is the fashion with some persons to assert that 
the condition of the English and Irish laborer 
is worse than that of our American slave. Some 
are sincere in this opinion. Others, who care not 
a straw either for laborer or slave, assume it as an 
apology for their pro-slavery position. As far as 
the one circumstance of food is concerned, we are 
ready to allow that for the last two years the 
Irish peasant has been worse off than the slave. 
But in making the general comparison one very 
important element is overlooked. Pandora's box is 
very carefully sent to our wretched bondmen, but 
when they open it, they find that all the evils are 
correctly forwarded as per invoice, only Hope has 
somehow got lost out on the way. The great fallacy 
in the parallel seems to be that though we grant 
that men cannot be happy and starve at the same 
time, yet it does not follow that they are necessarily 
elevated to a state of perfect bliss by a bellyful of 
hominy. 

Those who compare the physical condition of the 
Irish laborer and the slave should remember that 



C 206] 

the potato-rot was not a calamity whose approach 
was calculated in the almanacs. Even Cobbett, 
though he abused the potato as an article of food, 
never enumerated treachery among its other bad 
qualities. Is there any reason why maize should not 
be attacked by a similar epidemic ? If this calamity 
should take place, the only circumstance in favor of 
the slave, as compared with his poor brother over 
the ocean, would be put out of the question. 

We began by speaking of the reluctance of the 
English people to have Smith O'Brien hanged, 
drawn, and quartered, and we called it a good sign 
as far as it went. Not that transportation with 
felons would not be a more barbarous punishment 
for such a man. But the circumstance merely shows 
that when you bring bloodshed directly and palpably 
before men's eyes they are revolted by it, though 
it be performed with a ceremonious observance of 
punctilious proprieties. Such a feeling, however, is 
rather a testimony in favor of human nature than a 
proof of the possession of right principle. It is like 
the horror which a person who eats beef and mutton 
every day of his life would feel in a slaughter-house. 
The people of England, through their government, 
perpetrate atrocities continually to which the execu- 
tion of O'Brien and the others would be a mere 
trifle. And we do no better. 



[ 207 ] 

While we are wondering at the bad economy dis- 
played by a nation in keeping a province in such a 
condition that fleets, armies, and fortifications are 
needed merely to hold it down, we cannot help 
thinking of our own three millions held in subjec- 
tion by brute force, in whose aggregate we our- 
selves form units. It is our weight that presses 
down the slave at this moment. 

We consider the trial and conviction of Drayton 
at our own seat of government, and during the ses- 
sion of our national legislature, to be infinitely more 
disgraceful to us than the condemnation of O'Brien 
is to England. Drayton is now lying in Washing- 
ton jail, sentenced to twenty years imprisonment on 
a single indictment, and with seventy-one other in- 
dictments of the same kind hanging over him. His 
case is already well-nigh forgotten. Yet he has been 
punished for a simple act of humanity which we 
think well enough of human nature to suppose that 
there are few who would have refused to perform. 

There are persons among us who spend a great 
deal of time and money in endeavoring to check the 
spread of Popery, and who enforce their arguments 
by appeals to the bygone horrors of the Inquisition 
and the long-extinguished fires of Smithfield. The 
enormities perpetrated daily under the cover of our 
slaveholding system and with the assistance of our 



[ 208 ] 

slaveholding government throw the Inquisition and 
Smithfield entirely into the shade. Slavery exercises 
a more complete spiritual tyranny than the Pope 
ever did in the palmiest days of his power. How 
long will it be before we are able to see as clearly 
the atrocities which are daily enacted before our 
eyes as those which have been dead and buried for 
centuries ? 



THE PRESIDENT'S MESSAGE 

.zVs every one of our citizens who has completed 
the number of years required by the Constitution 
has a chance at the Presidency, we think that in- 
struction in the composition of public documents 
should be made a part of the course of education in 
our public schools. The younger scholars might be 
put at once into guber-natorial messages. The next 
step would be into the reports of depart-mental sec- 
retaries, and the system would be completed by a 
year's practice in presidential messages. If every 
class were compelled to remain until each member 
of it had got through with the reading of his exer- 
cise, the natural desires of food and play would soon 
reduce even those most obstinately ambitious of 
rhetorical display within the limits of a Spartan 
brevity. The time at present devoted to the study 
of the boundaries of the United States (which, being 
as shifting by nature as some kinds of sand-bars, 
can never be permanently deposited in the memory) 
might be given up to the acquisition of this more 
practically useful science. Perhaps a more imme- 
1/ 



C slo 3 

diate relief might be hoped from an amendment to 
the Constitution requiring Presidential messages to 
be transmitted to Congress through the medium of 
the magnetic telegraph. This would secure unin- 
telligibility without the present necessary outlay of 
words. 

President Polk, hopeless now alike of renomi- 
nation and reelection, takes his first instalment of 
revenge in a message nearly as long as a shilling 
novel, and even more worthy to rank as an original 
fiction. Should his farewell address be composed 
in the same retaliatory spirit, it will prolong the 
period of his tyranny over editors and other con- 
scientious readers of state-papers to a period several 
hours sub-sequent to the legal date of his exit. We 
wonder that, while he was contrasting our condition 
with that of Europe, and while his discriminating 
eye was fixed upon Prussia, it did not occur to him 
to include, among his other parallels, one between a 
boreocracy and a bureaucracy. It would have been 
a congenial topic, and one not more foreign to the 
purpose of an annual message than many others 
which he has introduced. 

The present message is in some sort valedictory. 
The Polkian leavetaking is, however, far from being 
a painful one, unless it be on the presidential side. 
And even there the grief, if there be any, is veiled 



C 211 1 

under an assumption of pride. The President re- 
counts to his jilting mistress, the People, the coun- 
tries he has stolen and then paid for, the glory he 
has won, and the statesmanship he has exhibited, as 
if to show what a valuable lover is in him discarded. 
There is something Belisarian in the position of the 
successful commander-in-chief thus dismissed to ob- 
scurity. His farewell, nevertheless, lacks the martial 
brevity. The greenest laurels would have become 
dry and sere during the delivery of it. 

The President begins by an invocation of Provi- 
dence. It has been observed of beggars that they 
commonly preface the larger sorts of lies with ap- 
peals of this description, and we may extend the 
observation to Chief Magistrates. After congratu- 
lating his fellow-citizens upon being the freest and 
most enlightened, he proceeds to speak of the peace- 
ful annexation of Texas, and of the unhappy war 
forced upon us by a neighboring nation. He says 
that we (the American People) " recognize in all na- 
tions the right which we enjoy ourselves to change 
and reform their political institutions according to 
their own will and pleasure. Hence we do not look 
behind existing governments capable of maintaining 
their own authority." Most veracious President ! 
One would imagine that he had just been giving a 
public reception to the Ambassador from Haiti. 




C 212 3 

It is truly ludicrous to witness the absurdities and 
contradictions into which a president is led by the 
necessity of administering the annual amount of 
glorification. Mr. Polk recognizes the right of every 
nation to change its form of government. Now from 
the context it is evident that the word nation does not 
here mean the government with which we entertain 
diplomatic relations, but the governed, — a doctrine 
which would justify our own slaves in an insurrec- 
tion to-morrow. And he is unquestionably in the 
right. Much as we should regret such a catastro- 
phe, there can be no doubt that if ever insurrection 
was justifiable, it is so in the case of our American 
slaves. "Thou hypocrite, first cast out the beam 
| that is in thine own eye." 

The President next enumerates the tracts of ter- 
ritory we have acquired during his administration. 
He endeavors to give us a proper idea of their mag- 
nitude and importance by several different modes of 
statement. First he tells us the number of square 
miles, then the number of acres, and finally assures 
us that our new possessions are as large as the conti- 
nent of Europe. There is no doubt that if the bless- 
ings of Slavery were to be estimated by the number 
of acres over which it is likely to be extended, it 
would turn out to be one of the happiest institutions 
the human race ever enjoyed. 



[ 213 ] 

Next we are assured that the Mexican War has 
made us much more respected abroad, and convinced 
monarchical Europe that republicans can be as sav- 
age as other people. Mr. Polk seems to imagine that 
the Kings of the old world — who have as much as 
they can do to hold themselves upon their thrones 
with both hands — are only waiting for an oppor- 
tunity to send an army over three thousand miles of 
ocean to subjugate us. He does not mention any 
particular sovereign, but we think he had the fero- 
cious tyrant of Mecklenburg-Schwerin in his eye. 

Before we apply ourselves to the kernel of the 
message, we prefer to go carefully over the enor- 
mous husk in which the author has enveloped it. 
He gives us a sketch of what he calls the " Amer- 
ican System " from as far back as the year 1791. 
The most diverting part of it is that in which he 
gives the supposed reasons which influenced the 
early supporters of a Tariff. He says : " There was 
also something fascinating in the ease, luxury, and 
display of higher orders who drew their wealth from 
the toil of laboring millions. The authors of the 
system forgot to look down upon the poorer classes 
of the English population. They failed to perceive 
that the scantily fed and half-clad operatives were 
not only in abject poverty, but were bound in chains 
of oppressive servitude for the benefit of favored 



classes who were the exclusive objects of the care 
of government." Now, would any one suspect that 
the author of this fine sentence had probably been 
shaved by a slave the very morning he wrote it ? 
that the boots on his feet had been brushed, and 
the shirt on his back washed by a slave? Such 
flummery is absolutely disgusting. 

But the kernel of the message is contained in the 
recommendations to Congress in regard to the new 
territory. Mr. Polk begins by drawing such a flat- 
tering picture of the agricultural, mineral, and com- 
mercial capabilities of the country as he thinks will 
be enough to bribe the free states to consent to any 
immediate settlement of the question. Then he re- 
commends the Missouri Compromise line, or, failing 
that, he advises that the whole matter be left to the 
Supreme Court. 

That some such proposition would be made every 
one expected. The most fatal blows at liberty have 
always been struck at these short sessions, when 
the election of a new Congress has rendered the 
members of the old more careless about the will of 
their constituents. Mr. Polk has the impudence to 
pretend that even the Missouri Compromise was a 
concession on the part of the slave states, and only 
excusable on the score of necessity. He purposely 
confounds the question of legislation in regard to 



L 21 5 ] 
slavery in the states with the totally different one of 
slavery in the territories, and then proposes to leave 
the matter to a slaveholding: court. 

We hope, though faintly, that Congress may be 
so far afraid of Northern anti-slavery feeling as to 
reject the wily President's advice. Perhaps there is 
more ground for hope in the circumstance that the 
Northern Democrats may unite with the anti-exten- 
sion Whigs in order to force the question over upon 
the first Congress under the new administration. 
One thing only is certain, that if slavery be admitted 
to the territories at all, Free Labor is necessarily 
excluded from the whole of them. President Polk 
goes over the old falsehood of their not being adapted 
to the Institution. But we remember too well the 
treachery of Texas, and also that slavery has never 
been so terribly cruel and destructive as where the 
more immediate thirst for gold has been excited by 
the existence of mines. 



A WASHINGTON MONUMENT 

_Lt seems to us that money is never so uselessly 
spent as in building monuments, except perhaps in 
traveling to see them after they are built. What- 
ever man or event needs a pile of stones for memory 
does not deserve one, and whatever or whoever is 
worthy of such costly lapidation does not want it. 
Great men and great deeds live in history and in 
song. The hero, the wise man, the artist, all build 
their own monuments, broad-based as continents, 
lasting as love and reverence. The traveller feels 
that St. Peter's is less sacred to the inspired fish- 
erman than to the inspired architect. Columbus 
has a hemisphere for commemoration. The obedi- 
ent planets write forever in the sky the epitaphs of 
Copernicus and Newton. Our rivers swarm with the 
monuments of Fulton. And yet who shall tell us 
what mighty conqueror pitched those huge granite 
tents upon the desert's edge. He has stone enough, 

but is forgotten — 

Caret quia vate sacro. 

The field of Bannockburn was whollv Scotch, and 



C 21 ? 3 

no weight of brass or marble could have ransomed 
it from that narrow nationality. But by and by 
comes along an Ayrshire peasant, hums a verse or 
two, and makes it cosmopolitan. Emerson's ode, 
simple and grand, shall tell posterity that an obe- 
lisk once displaced the sacred privacy of Concord 
field. How trivial and obtrusive would seem a pyra- 
mid heaped upon Plymouth Rock, holy with the 
footsteps of those who unlocked the future of man- 
kind! 

The agre which builds monuments is that which 
has seen heroism fairly underground. As far as it 
can guess, the heroic is dead and decently buried, 
and the only duty left is to put up the gravestone 
and pay for the Latin. The living heroic does not 
borrow of the quarry, nor hire the sculptor. It 
builds religions and states, not tombs. It commemo- 
rates great actions by greater. When greatness has 
become traditional, then men make up the loss in 
stone and bronze. They who are most busy heaping 
stones upon dead prophets commonly find time to 
bestow a pebble or two on the live ones. 

Perhaps no truly beautiful monument was ever 
erected. John Bull and his son Jonathan, with very 
strong predilections toward the rearing of memorials, 
have shown very questionable taste. It is hard to 
make beautiful anything so utterly useless. The 



n si8 i 

Celts were in one respect wiser. Nobody could criti- 
cise their cairns and barrows. As for us, we must 
have our extravagances this way, for no other reason 
than that other people do. Shall our fathers have 
an ounce less marble or a sentence less Latin than 
other people's ? It would not be respectable. No. 
Our coffins must cost as much as any. 

If we must needs have something to remember 
our great men by, statues would be better than 
anything else. For not only is there a natural desire 
in men to see how a famous person looked, but this 
kind of remembrance has also the farther advan- 
tage that we have a great and original sculptor of 
our own to make them for us. Probably the world 
has never had five such sculptors as Powers, and we 
ought to see to it that he has enough to do. Our 
present statues of Washington are poor. There is 
not one of them which we can look at with so much 
pleasure as upon that of Penn in front of the hos- 
pital in Philadelphia. However wanting in other 
respects, that figure has a simplicity and integrity 
about it which we miss in all the stone that has been 
chiselled in honor of Washington. The statue by 
Houdon has a vulgar swagger. That by Chantrey 
has a certain English dignity and solidity about it 
well befitting the subject, but the sculptor was 
afraid to make an American without a kind of 



[ 219 ] 
apology to ancient art in the drapery. Greenough's 
we have never seen, but we should consider the size 
as sufficient objection to it. Great men do not re- 
quire to be represented as giants. The costume also 
is bad. The clothes that were good enough for the 
man are good enough for the marble. The objection 
of familiarity has no force, for it is merely one of 
time, — a transient consideration of which a fine 
work of art is entirely independent. Nothing could 
be uglier than a court-dress of the time of Charles 
the First, nothing more unbecoming than a suit of 
armor. Yet in Van Dyke's pictures they seemed 
natural, graceful, and dignified. 

After all, Washington is not our representative 
American man. He is rather English than Amer- 
ican. Daniel Boone is more like it, — adventurous, 
forever pushing westward, annexing by dint of long 
rifle and longer head, yet carrying with him a kind 
of law, and planting the seed of a commonwealth. 
Our art is likely to do better things with such a 
man than with Washington. But the monument at 
present proposed to be built to Washington is an 
obelisk five hundred feet high, springing from a 
square base presenting on every side a columned 
front. The Anglo-Saxon race have never shown 
much aptitude for any architecture except that of 
colonies and states. With stone and mortar they 



£ 220 ] 

have done little, and that meagre and imitative. 
Not sentimental nor eminently imbued with reli- 
gious feeling, they have housed their religion worse 
than any other race. The cathedrals and abbeys of 
England and Scotland sprang from Norman brains. 
Use and not sentiment has been the Saxon charac- 
teristic. Accordingly their dwellings have been the 
most comfortable, their ideas of government the 
most practical, and their criticism (till inoculated 
from Germany) the coldest and most meagre in the 
world. 

The pilgrims who came to New England in 1620 
represented in tolerable completeness the Saxon ele- 
ment of English life. They built up a state and a 
commerce forthwith. Ere long they began to send 
out colonies. They could not have elbow-room 
enough on the continent while the French were 
seated to the north of them. They made a religion 
hard, square, and unyielding, and then constructed 
square boxes to hold it where they might be sure to 
find it once a week. For religion was a job of down- 
right hard work, which they went at with their 
coats off. Organization, trade, and the sending out 
of new colonies, — these were their play. From such 
a race architecture for architecture's sake was not 
to be looked for. They have built best what was 
useful and practical, as ships, railroads, and aque- 



C 221 ] 

ducts. In all the United States there is not a beau- 
tiful church, — or, if beautiful, it is not in any 
sense American. But we have handsome shops 
enough. 

No nation should be more cautious in undertaking 
to erect a monument. The drawing of the one now 
proposed for Washington does not strike us favor- 
ably. We can perceive no peculiar appropriateness 
in it, and consequently no peculiar beauty. On the 
other hand, we find many incongruities. What is 
the meaning, for example, of the figure in front of 
the obelisk chiving four horses abreast ? There are 
such figures on some other monuments perhaps, bor- 
rowed from the antique, and there is something like 
it in Guido's Aurora, but where is its fitness ? 
Sensible people do not drive horses in this manner, 
nor did we ever see anything like the chariot to 
which they are attached, except an ox cart or a 
dray. Then, too, the inscription is in Latin. Why ? 
Because it is more generally understood ? Then why 
not in French, which is more generally understood 
still ? Or perhaps it is Classic ? In that case, why 
did not the Romans use Greek in their inscriptions, 
— a language more classic than their own, and which 
was the French of the ancient world beside ? 

But we do not see the need of any monument at 
all, least of all in such an out of the way place as 



the city of Washington. New York would be a more 
appropriate spot. 

" What needs my Shakespeare, for his honored bones, 
The labors of an age in piled stones ? " 

exclaims Milton, fresh from the Tempest or the 
Midsummer Night's Dream. And we may say the 
same of Washington. There is no such pressing 
danger of his being forgotten. If any state wish to 
build him a monument, let her do some good deed 
and say it is in honor of him. Let one build an 
asylum for discharged convicts, let another raise 
her colored citizens to an equality, let a third liber- 
ate her slaves. There will yet be monuments enough 
of this sort to be built, though we carve the whole 
continent into states. 

We should not have apparently travelled out of 
our course to notice such a subject were it not that, 
while abolitionists ought to feel as much interested 
in the arts as others, the present undertaking has 
something other than a mere artistic aspect for 
them. Agents are canvassing the country in every 
direction collecting subscriptions for this object, and 
abolitionists will be called on for their aid as well 
as the rest. Now, although since General Taylor 
has been a candidate many worthy people seem to 
have forgotten every good quality of Washington, 
except that he was a slaveholder, this surely is not 



C 223 ] 

the justest view of his character, nor that which 
abolitionists love to take. We would not forget 
that he held slaves, but neither would we forget that 
he was Washington, and, even if we were anxious 
that a pile of stones should be heaped up to his 
memory, we could never consent to give any the least 
aid toward building it in the District of Columbia. 
Let no shaft rise for so great and good a man in a 
market-place for human flesh ! If our Whig friends 
must keep reminding us that Washington held his 
fellow men in bondage, they cannot, at least, say 
that he was a slave-trader. Let no man, abolitionist 
or not, contribute to rear an obelisk within hearing 
of the manseller's hammer, and in front of which 
the wretched slave-coffle shall be driven to the hope- 
less South ! 



END OF VOLUME I. 



1Q0? 




